


What Fades Away

by Holly



Category: Inception (2010), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Inceptionlock, John POV, Kidnapping, M/M, Nightmare Imagery, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Reichenbach, Suicidal ideation...kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:06:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 37,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holly/pseuds/Holly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Moriarty: the most dangerous criminal mind the world has ever seen.  Sherlock and his team are going in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a crossover - characters from Sherlock are set in the world of Inception. If you haven’s seen the film, this will be quite confusing; there’s a synopsis here and a description of roles here (in the Members section), which will hopefully help! It is a fantastic film, though - I would definitely recommend watching it if you can.
> 
> John isn't a doctor in this AU, but the military found him to be a rather brilliant dream architect. Sherlock isn't a consulting detective, but he still solves crimes in his own bizarre way. Lestrade isn't a DI, but he's still with the Met. Mycroft is still the government. Stubborn bastard. And the others I think you can figure out!
> 
> There are bits of S2 EVERYWHERE in this fic, but nothing beyond that. I thought that after Sherlock poked Lestrade in the forehead in The Reichenbach Fall, there would be hundreds of Inception crossovers, but there aren't that many! That meant I had to do it. Sorry, everyone. I'll do my best.
> 
> Complete; no longer a WIP. Yay!

"You can't kill an idea, can you? Not once it's made a home… there." -Sherlock, TRF

—————

When John had first started dream-sharing for the military after being in Afghanistan for a few months, he found that he already had an obvious choice for a totem. He used his 'dog tag' identity discs, cutting tiny notches around the edge that no one else could know about. Not visible notches, of course. They could be felt, and that was all, and he never, ever took them off. There was one notch in the tag on the long chain for every time he went out into the field, topside. This was rare, so there weren't many; his main work now was in the minds of the soldiers. He still knew his way around a gun better than most, and unfortunately it still didn't help him when it counted.

It was classified, of course, but strong, drug-aided, lucid dreaming wasn't unheard-of in those parts of the country, and the practice of ascertaining awakeness had already been deemed useful and found a small foothold. Native totems weren't used for quite the same purposes as theirs, but it was enough to plant the idea, and as they'd been told over and over in their cobbled-together training for this new field, an idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious.

The totem had been the first thing he'd reached for when he'd been shot, even before the small bandage he had on him, because his shoulder had hurt like hell and the nearest morphine-bearing medic, he knew, was a good quarter mile away. The hope of waking up had been the only relief he could count on. He remembered feeling for his tags, finding the metal warm from lying against his body and from the daylight desert sun. He'd fumbled, lying on the ground only a few paces from his comrades while projectiles flew back and forth above him, his other hand already pulling out his firearm in order to wake himself from this nightmare.

Notches, there were notches in the metal, one two three four five six seven. Seven. He thought for a moment, trying to force his screaming mind to remember, then took his cocked revolver away from his head with something like regret, patched himself up as best he could, and tried to think of something besides agony for long enough to drag himself - using his good arm and pushing with his legs - to relative safety.

He was well aware that there had been days since where he'd wished he'd miscounted and pulled the trigger. Not that many days, he told himself.

When he was discharged and sent home, with his usual practicality he'd judged that totem no longer appropriate. He wasn't an active soldier anymore, wasn't going under for queen and country, wasn't wearing the tags in the shower and at work and in bed. He was going to be doing dream-work for his own purposes: to make a living, he hoped. So instead, he used the bullet they'd dug out of him. A bullet like that looked utterly different after it had been fired and come up against bone; it was 7.62mm of wide-awake. The spread of the tip was unique. The wound was unforgettable. It worked very well.

He'd almost immediately found himself on a civilian team of illegal extractors. Well - 'civilian' and 'extractors' more or less guaranteed the rest. The 'illegal' part did rankle, he couldn't deny it, but he had to pay the bills somehow, and topside architecture no longer held any thrill for him. That 'unstable, physically damaged ex-soldier' label he'd managed to pick up also didn't exactly bring employers around to his horrible little bedsit in droves. And the wound made it nearly impossible to do any sort of physical work. He got a little temporary work doing this and that; a variety of menial jobs that couldn't even pay the rent on a real flat, but the idea of doing something long-term, something less exciting than the life he'd grown used to, was sickening.

It was therefore an enormous stroke of - something - that almost before his shoulder had healed he'd been snapped up - well, let's be honest, he found himself in a flatshare with the most brilliant forger he'd ever met, lead extractor of said illegal team, who was tirelessly persuasive once he'd learned of John's history. Most brilliant forger, hell. The most brilliant person. John would create worlds for the man just to watch him work. To say he was a chameleon would be doing him a disservice, though the man himself was less concerned with his skills as a forger than with the way he could take apart a mind, learn all its secrets, and be awake and hard at work with the new information before John could say 'incredible.' Sherlock Holmes was fascinating. Also a complete arse most of the time, but fascinating. The fascination was intense enough to keep John following, for some reason, and he thought of himself as a skeptic under the very best of circumstances.

When he came home from one of his days 'on', this time as an analyst of an endlessly dull stream of numbers to be matched to another endlessly dull stream of numbers, he found his flatmate studying the ceiling, deep in apparent thought on the couch. John ignored him and headed straight for the kettle. This had already become routine despite it being only about a month after he'd moved in. Sherlock was terribly easy to live with if you didn't mind the not-talking, or the 3am concertos, or the utter lack of anything termed 'housework,' or the mess everywhere, or the lack of boundaries. He found it better not to examine the situation.

John hadn't encountered Sherlock on his way out that morning, only saw when he filled the kettle that the door to his bedroom was wide open and the room empty. He had either already got up and gone out or (more likely) had never gone to bed. Normal human needs like sleep and food just passed him by; he caught up on sleep enough with the help of the PASIV, John supposed, and at least he'd eaten a few bites last night, albeit under duress. So when John returned from work he didn't harangue his prone flatmate over it, only asked mildly if he wanted tea. As was often the case, Sherlock ignored him. John tried not to take it personally and opened the fridge for the milk.

Milk was a luxury he never passed up if he could manage it. Real, non-powdered milk had been rare when he was deployed, and he'd learned to  
drink tea without, but it wasn't his preference. Sherlock liked it because he'd probably always had it, the ponce.

"You're frowning again," Sherlock commented from the doorway. John jumped; Jesus Christ, the man could move like a cat.

"Just imagining the privileged life," he said, as calmly as he could. "Must have been nice." He turned in time to see Sherlock displaying his expression of perfect exasperation. All his expressions were perfect; it was supremely annoying.

"John, it's irrational to be angry about something over which neither of us had any control. It--"

"I'm not angry,” John interrupted. “Just thinking."

"Hmph," Sherlock said, breezing the rest of the way into the kitchen. His phone chirped from the living room, but he ignored it in favor of pulling down a second mug, giving John a significant look, and breezing out again. John just raised a brow, which passed without comment.

"You're welcome!" he said loudly to Sherlock's back as he fetched another teabag, and was of course ignored. Sherlock reappeared within seconds, though, frowning at his phone.

"Anything interesting?" John asked, more from habit than curiosity. The kettle clicked off and he poured, hoping that his apparent lack of interest would prompt a response this time.

"A text from Lestrade."

"So why are you frowning at it?"

Greg Lestrade was no stranger to John; for a start, the man was his predecessor. He'd given up the life of a dream architect (John wondered how one could just give that up, though Sherlock's attitude certainly made it easier to understand), but he occasionally asked for their team's help. Less often since he joined the Met, of course. Sherlock said Lestrade had left his team and gone Legitimate, with as much derision as he could pour into the word. Lestrade (Lestrade, not Greg, for Sherlock) just looked stubbornly back at him whenever Sherlock called him on this as if to say '…yeah?'

It must be hard to balance your connections to the criminal underworld via your boyfriend's brother's gang with your job at Scotland Yard, John thought with a smirk.

"I'm frowning," Sherlock explained impatiently, "because he wants us both to come to the Yard this evening. He wants to give us a case."

John waited, and when nothing more was forthcoming he figured he'd bite, just this once. He found himself thinking 'just this once' a lot with Sherlock - even had done just after they'd met. ('Just this once' I'll go into the dream with him. 'Just this once' I'll help him extract information from a serial killer. 'Just this once' I'll pretend I don't know what's in that vial besides Somnacin.) 

"Why doesn't he just come by?" he asked instead.

Sherlock finally looked up at him, but his eyes strayed immediately back to his phone. "This request is in his official capacity."

John stared at him. "Official?"

"That's what I said." Sherlock appeared to be going for 'impatient,' but John could tell that he couldn't quite believe it either.

"So. Um. Are we going legit?" He kept his voice light, laughing, trying to ignore the tension underneath. It was quite an odd request, and he didn't like to think of potential reasons for it. None of them led him to pleasant answers.

"God, I hope not," Sherlock huffed, and looked up from the phone at last to smile at him; a real smile that reassured John that Sherlock had no intention of using this to get out of any charges against him, or to sell out his newest team of miscreants, or whatever other insane thing John was trying not to imagine. Sherlock was loyal - wasn’t he? Sherlock put his team first - didn't he? He wondered, not for the first time, what he was doing as the point man - the bloody architect - for a leader so mercurial; and, not for the first time, he neatly sidestepped that question since the answer could potentially lead to uncomfortable places.

"Right, so do I have time to drink this before we go?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to my tireless beta, who feared she had lost her umlaut. But hadn't!  
> This isn't britpicked except by me, and a non-Englishwoman in England for a couple years makes for a pretty shoddy britpick. If you see errors, please let me know!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Genius needs an audience.

"Do you want to take a leap of faith, or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?" -Saito, _Inception_

—————

Lestrade lead them past rows of desks, a few with officers diligently crouched over them, without appearing anything but casual and relaxed. John's fingers itched. He felt like every person who glanced up was suspicious of his and Sherlock's presence, and he would have felt so much more comfortable if he'd brought his gun. This, he knew, was a very stupid idea. That didn't mean he didn't want it. He looked ahead to see if Sherlock was as visibly uncomfortable as he was and bit back a snort. Sherlock looked utterly nonchalant, glancing directly at the officers as he passed, while John did everything possible to avoid eye contact. Sherlock may as well have been the lord of this small office, appearing from on high to ignore his minions in person, just as he behaved like the lord of pretty much everything else. Disturbingly, he didn't look out of place.

Lestrade led them into a glass-walled office whose frosted strips were designed to give some privacy (though not nearly as much as John would have liked), and gestured to a pair of chairs opposite the desk.

"Very… legitimate," Sherlock said, glancing around with distaste as they sat.

"Yeah, thanks. It's not my office, I'm afraid, but what Dimmock doesn’t know won't kill him." Lestrade surveyed the office with satisfaction, and it was all too easy to picture him there. His former associations really had cost him, John thought, and he suddenly felt very sorry for the man. John had managed it legitimately with the army, for a while at least, while Greg had started his career sneaking around under the radar of the authorities. It was certainly harder to go legit after being illegal than the other way around, even if it hadn't been precisely illegal when Greg had started - though the laws came into being soon after. John wondered when he himself would move on. What he'd move on to. Somehow, he couldn't picture himself leaving, a thought that really should have been more frightening than it was.

Lestrade peeked under files seemingly at random until he found what he was searching for, and pulled a file out of a teetering stack on Dimmock's desk. He slid it over to them, where Sherlock narrowed his eyes at it. "That's the target behind your next mark, if you take the job I'm offering," Lestrade said.

Sherlock didn't open it yet. "And what, will I find, is in it for me and my team if I do?"

"Well, I can't pretend it's for the money," Lestrade said, rather wearily. "The knowledge of a job well-done? A deranged killer behind bars?" Sherlock looked flatly unimpressed at both of these suggestions.

"A personal favor, then. It would - well, I'd say it would help me out if we could catch this guy, but honestly it would do a hell of a lot more than that. I'd be here for good, for a start." At this, Sherlock looked pensive and John looked elsewhere. Or tried to.

"Do you want to rejoin the team?" Sherlock asked suddenly, as though this was an ordinary sort of question along the lines of 'Is it raining out?' Maybe, for him, it was.

Lestrade, at least, appeared to notice John's discomfort. "No, and anyway you've already got another architect. From what I hear, a damn good one."

"I know I do," Sherlock said. John was rather surprised at the sort-of compliment, and failed utterly at suppressing it. "I don't mean as an architect."

"Well I don't know what the hell else I would do. But I'm not interested. Anyhow, Mycroft would have kittens." Sherlock looked predictably ill at the mention of his brother.

"He always was rather catlike, particularly in his tendency to leave dead things on the carpet," he agreed. At this, John turned his head to stare at him in blatant shock; given his fascination with various parts of dead animals, it was a wonder that Sherlock had even noticed. Lestrade, fortunately, ignored it.

"Look, if you can do this, I'll make sure that no one else snoops around and finds out what you get up to when no one's looking. I've got a few connections." Lestrade was starting to sound defensive, but Sherlock clearly still wasn't going for it; he looked extremely doubtful.

"I could get your brother to fix it, too," Lestrade tried. At this, Sherlock finally appeared interested - but not in a good way. His expression was darkening rapidly.

"Mycroft is already in on this?" he asked, dangerous and soft.

"He'll pay your team well, you know he's got the means," Lestrade said hurriedly, but Sherlock was already shaking his head. "Mycroft didn't think you'd be willing to do it if you knew he was involved," Lestrade continued, his voice already defeated.

"For once in his life," said Sherlock, "Mycroft was right. Good day." He stood to go.

"This one's smarter than you," came Greg's voice as John was turning to follow Sherlock. The man stopped so quickly that John almost ran into that ridiculous coat.

"I - what?" Sherlock said, as if he hadn't heard. John stared at his back, astonished. It was the first time he'd ever - ever - heard the man stumble over his impeccably precise words. They both went very still.

"This target. He's the only one I've ever seen who could come close, but he does, Sherlock. He's got a hand in hundreds of cases, and those are just the ones I know about. Three recent ones have already gone to trial and two of them were acquitted.”

"Perhaps, but he couldn't be _smarter_ ,” Sherlock said, turning. It just figured, John thought, that he would find the concept of anyone unrelated to him being as smart inconceivable.

"You haven't met him," Lestrade said wearily.

"And you have? Tell me everything," Sherlock demanded, suddenly looming over Lestrade, icy eyes boring into him.

"I've only met people who worked for him," Lestrade corrected, defensive. "They were utterly committed, Sherlock, every last one, going on about his genius - and I don't think it was brainwashing, or a cult philosophy or any of that. They wouldn't give up his name, most of them, but they weren't bright enough to come up with these schemes on their own. And I know his style; God knows I've seen enough of it. It's all in the file."

He nodded down at the folder, and for the first time, perhaps, Sherlock actually appeared to see it. He turned his focus downward, still occasionally turning a narrow-eyed gaze on Lestrade, and flipped it open. A sharply-dressed, dark-haired young man filled the grainy top photo, clearly culled from a surveillance video and then enlarged. The man was smiling in the photo as if this was the best day of his life, and he was pointing a gun at someone out of the camera's view. Calm, manic, focused. One could just make out mad black eyes.

"Only photo we could find, and believe me, I looked," Lestrade explained. "The man barely exists, and yet he's everywhere. Not an easy thing to do. I suspect we only got that one because he wanted us to have it."

"Why would he want that?" John asked, fascinated.

"Because he wants the police to know it's him in charge, and that it's not because he's willing to take the fall for his minions," Sherlock said, still staring at the photo, to John's astonishment. "In fact, I'd be willing to bet it's one of his on the other end of that gun."

"It was, and he pulled the trigger," Lestrade added, in a dull voice. Sherlock nodded.

"But why would he want us to _know_?” John persisted.

"The frailty of genius, John, it needs an audience," Sherlock said. "Appreciation! Applause! At long last, a spotlight."

"You're kidding," John said sarcastically, but no one took any notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much gratitude to my friend, the eagle-eyed beta.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Really, Sherlock is already hooked.

"It is a game, Lestrade, and not one I'm willing to play." -Sherlock, TRF

—————

"I'll think about it," Sherlock announced to Lestrade, closing the file.

Lestrade narrowed his eyes at him, but apparently was satisfied with what he saw there since he only nodded. John thought it was the right move - Sherlock was obviously already ensnared by this case; there was no way he would hand it back without digging into it as deeply as his greedy, elegant hands would let him.

"All right," Lestrade said at last, "but take care of that. It's the office file and not something I'd like to see end up in the wrong hands. It's not like there are a lot of copies lying around."

"You can rely on my discretion as always, Lestrade." Sherlock seemed amused, but John didn't get the joke.

"And," Lestrade persisted, "if you take the case, I'm, er. Well." He didn't seem to want to meet Sherlock's eyes. "There has to be a result. It's not exactly a legal way to collar someone, and I'm not following any legal precedent." Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Your brother did whatever it is he does to allow you in on this one," Lestrade explained. "If you can't, it's my arse that gets the boot, you understand?"

"You're relying on me to catch this one for you?"

"Well," Lestrade said uncomfortably, as though paying compliments to this character was akin to exposing his back to a known assassin, "you're the best. And I'll do the catching, thanks, you just get me a location. Or at least figure out what the hell is going on with this guy. I can't make heads or tails of it."

Sherlock eyed him. "And how do you plan for us to do this?" He indicated the grainy photo. "I assume this fellow isn't presenting himself for unconsciousness in any approved fashion."

"No, but Ian Monkford is. Details on the Monkford case are in there, too; the target is apparently spearheading it somehow. Could be the break we need." Lestrade's eyes glittered, and for the first time John recognized the enthusiasm of a hunt. He'd seen it in his flatmate when he got the text. They were quite a pair, working together, he thought darkly, and something unpleasant stirred in his belly at the realization. He suppressed it.

"Mr. Monkford has a dental appointment on Thursday," Lestrade continued. "Getting put under. Make up your mind soon; we don't want to lose this window."

"You won't," Sherlock assured him, with what John thought was an outlandish amount of swagger. Problem was, he was probably right. "So why go after this Monkford when you already know who the big fish is, pulling the strings?"

"I'm hoping this will lead us to him. Lead us to a cold trail. Lead us to a place to start. The man is a bloody specter, I swear; he vanishes like steam."

"That does sound like me," Sherlock said approvingly, earning glares from both the other men in the room.

"Yeah, well," Lestrade said, eyeing him sidelong. "I'm the one hoping to get a lead on him, so I'm the one tagging along with you."

"No," Sherlock said, with finality. "Absolutely not."

"It's not like it will be the first time," Lestrade said, already sounding exasperated. He'd clearly been expecting this. "I practically know your methods better than you do."

"I think it's a good idea if he comes," John put in, and Sherlock turned his glare in his direction. "It'll mean more backup, since this one could get tricky, and more eyes looking for things that might get - well, all right, I don't think you'd miss anything. But it'd be good to have him there. Another pair of eyes." 

John was rather shocked to hear himself supporting this angle, but Greg Lestrade was something of a mystery and he'd learned a thing or two about getting safeguarded information in the dream state, having been in on the ground floor, as it were.

Sherlock refocused his glare on Lestrade. "Mycroft isn't coming," he said flatly.

"No," Lestrade agreed, and John breathed a silent sigh of relief that he wouldn't be required to calm Sherlock after a Mycroft appearance.

"He'll just be around, awake. Make sure we're not disturbed."

John mentally canceled that little breather.

"What," Sherlock said.

"O-kay, we should really be getting a team together, sorting out the drugs and all," John said hurriedly. "Greg, we'll talk to you as soon as something's decided. Text you. Something." He tried to steer Sherlock out of the room, but the man was stubbornly stiffening his limbs and making it very difficult.

"I take it you didn't try very hard to talk him out of it," Sherlock said, raising his voice. 

Lestrade apparently took this as a challenge. "No, because I've tried hard before and I was the only one of the two of us who caved. I don't want to repeat the experience."

Sherlock glared at him some more, but at least it was silent. John could understand what Lestrade was up against with Mycroft: that certain Holmesian argumentative immobility was hard to miss, though it was probably less childish in Mycroft's case. He glanced at Sherlock, who was actually beginning to pout. He and Lestrade should commiserate over a pint, not inspire suspicion in each other. John had a good reason not to like the sergeant, but he just couldn't manage it. It was supremely annoying.

Sherlock allowed himself to be steered out of the room, still glaring, but his attitude changed quickly enough once they were out of the office.

"I know an excellent chemist, we'll go to see her first," he said, breezing ahead to the lift. "Don't think a thief is required for this one. You'll do the architecture since I certainly can't trust Lestrade now that he's gone to the dark side with my brother." He spat the words as though he'd been personally offended. They stepped into the lift and Sherlock got that calculating look that meant he was thinking hard. "I'll do the forgery, of course."

"Since you can't trust Lestrade?" John repeated flatly.

"No, since he's not a forger, he's - well, was - an ar-- are you all right? You look… odd."

It wasn't like Sherlock to be so imprecise. He frowned at John until they exited the Yard and raised his hand automatically for a taxi. One stopped, of course, within moments.

"I'm fine," John said at last, going around to get in. Sherlock watched him with the intensity of a predator sighting dinner, and got in next to him. The cab pulled away.

"You're much better than he was," Sherlock said after a moment.

"Glad you think so."

"John." He waited until John looked over. "There is no one else I'd rather have on my team. Not in any role. You were the very best in the military, and you're the best now, and. I want you with me," he finished, after a frankly bizarre pause.

John just looked at him. The awkward pause stretched on.

"I'm useful," he said at last. That was okay; 'useful' he could work with. Sherlock sat for a moment in silence, watching London go by.

"All right, 'useful' is at least honest," John said, hoping to get another reply.

"That isn't all of it, of course."

"What's the rest?"

"Here we are," Sherlock said, jumping out of the taxi almost before it had fully stopped, and leaving John to pay the driver.

"What, already?" John said, but Sherlock was already gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much gratitude as always to the uber-beta. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chemist takes some convincing. But really not a lot.

"That's the clever part." -Yusuf, _Inception_

—————

They were at the teaching hospital where John had learned the basics of dream architecture in a human mind (rather than the less exciting architecture of the waking world) before being deployed. The 'instructors' - the army in general - hadn't had a clue what they were doing, and it had showed even then. John had corrected them on a few points of basic topside architecture during some of their sessions, and they hadn't been happy with that. _Oh well,_ he'd thought, _if I'm taken off the assignment, at least they'll get it right for my replacement._ There had not, of course, been a replacement.

Sherlock headed directly for the morgue, which figured; John supposed that his morbid streak wouldn't allow for anything else. A doctor with long brown hair tied in a neat ponytail, who appeared far too young for her degree, was speaking into a tape recorder over a naked corpse when they entered.

"Ah, Molly," Sherlock said, much too warmly. John was instantly suspicious. The girl - doctor, John reminded himself - glanced up and stuttered nonsense into the recorder before turning it off.

"Sherlock!" she said. "It's wonderful to - I mean, it's lovely to - " She stopped, clearly taking a deep breath. "Good to see you. What brings you here?"

"Need a favor," Sherlock said smoothly, as though she hadn't faltered at all. "A compound, one that guarantees a very clear connection between the dreamers."

John had learned that 'compound' was Sherlock-speak for 'chemical sleep concoction stronger than Somnacin' and was gearing up for a lecture on the subject when the doctor beat him to it.

"I'm really sorry, Sherlock," she said, belatedly realizing she was still holding the recorder and putting it down on the unfortunate corpse's arm. It slid off to the floor and immediately sprayed several small batteries in different directions. She looked down at it resignedly, then scrambled to retrieve them.

"The chemicals I'd use for a mixture like that are all locked up now," she continued from the floor. "People like me don’t get access to the keys." 

John had just enough time to wonder what she meant by 'people like me' before Sherlock - Sherlock bloody Holmes - scooped up an errant battery and was striding toward her, helpfully, with it cupped in his palm. She was still grabbing for them on her hands and knees, but rose shakily to her feet, wide-eyed at his approach.

"I'm sure I can find a way in," he said, and John felt his mouth drop open at how confident he sounded, how his voice had molded itself into the very essence of warm and sure. He was only vaguely familiar with that voice, but familiar enough that he knew that poor Molly didn't have a chance.

"Oh," she said, staring up at him. John didn't blame her, though he could feel his conscience nagging at him to intervene somehow. He didn't.

"They're locked in that tall, grey cabinet in the admitting area next door," she said as if mesmerized. "You'll need--"

"I know what I'll need. I'll be right back," he said, looking far away as he put the battery into the corpse's half-curled palm. He was already drawing out his lockpicking kit as he strode for the door. John and Molly both stared after him, but Molly recovered her voice first.

"I don't know why," she said, sounding bewildered, "why he has that effect on me. It doesn't matter what he wants." She turned to John. "Sorry." She looked tremendously abashed. "It's probably the long hours without company. Well, with this sort of company," she said with a small laugh, indicating the corpse.

"No," he replied, looking at the corpse. "No, I don't think that's it. I think he nearly always gets what he wants. It's made him sort of a bastard." She burst out laughing; a real laugh, this time.

"I think it's because he's sort of a bastard that he gets what he wants. No one wants to deal with an unhappy Sherlock," she said with a shudder. "In some of my more honest moments I think that might be part of the, er. Attraction. I always swear to myself that I'm not going to let it get to me, but it never works."

Determination was a good look on her, John realized. He could almost believe they weren't talking about Sherlock, and that she'd laughed at some joke he'd made, they were just two people flirting harmlessly at each other, and the unattainable genius in the next room was not at the forefront of either of their minds. But he knew better.

"Well. That and the damned cheekbones," John said, trying to play along. She laughed again.

"I get the feeling that you, at least, could say no to him and that would be the end of it."

John snorted; the closest thing to a laugh he could manage. "I made the mistake of trying, once. Only once." Molly raised her eyebrows, clearly inviting him to continue. "I told him I absolutely wasn't going into an unsuspecting man's dream to get information on a potential serial killer.”

"And?" she asked.

"And my resolve lasted about twenty seconds. Maybe fifteen. And it's a good thing it did, because as it turned out he _was_ the serial killer, and when I got there he was about to wake himself up and have access to a couple of sleeping victims topside. I disarmed him in the dream. Not sure I could have moved fast enough, awake, in that position. I had the element of surprise on my side." He goes quiet suddenly; his army training had certainly come in handy that day. But he didn't refuse to follow Sherlock again.

He shook himself. "So, no, I don't really think I could say no and have him listen."

"He'd listen. You're his friend." She looked at him carefully. “You’re the only one he brings in here, at any rate. Maybe you could be more, if you wanted."

His eyebrows must be meeting his hairline; now she was really projecting. "No, he's not like that. He doesn't feel things that way. I don't think."  
 "You don't think," she repeated, but before he could reply, Sherlock came sweeping back into the room with several bottles clutched to his chest.   
 "Having a little heart to heart?" he asked casually, leaning down to release his burden on a countertop. Molly said nothing, only went to inspect his loot. John sidled over to whisper to Sherlock while she was occupied.

"Yes, she's single, yes, she dates men," Sherlock said in a bored voice before he could speak.

"That wasn't what I was going to ask!" John insisted. Sherlock just turned to look silently at him.

"That wasn't the only thing I was going to ask," he corrected. "I'm just worried about her. She's sort of... tame, to involve in collaring a madman, isn't she?" Sherlock looked thoughtful, which John counted as a win.

"You underestimate her, John."

"Oh," he said, looking at Molly's back as she sorted the bottles. "Right. Yeah, you're right, I don't know her that well, sorry." Sherlock glanced back at him.

"It's all right, I underestimated her, too, once. Hidden depths." John was about to ask about the circumstances when Molly turned back.

"Two levels?" she guessed. "You have some heavy sleep medicine in here."

"No, I think one will do it," Sherlock said. "Our subject is getting put under by a dental surgeon, and Mycroft is going to play anesthesiologist, but we don't want to miss out on this. And we don't want him waking too soon. He's still got to have those wisdom teeth removed."

She looked shrewdly at him. Shrewdly and, John thought, a little sadly. "Strong drugs are the only ones that will put you under reliably, aren't they?"

Sherlock only raised an eyebrow. "Can you do it?"

"Yes, of course I can do it, but--"

"Excellent," Sherlock said, cutting her off. "We'll need it by Wednesday to get ready."

There was only the slightest hint of a pause: the sound, John thought, of a Hippocratic Oath being molded into a fitting shape.

"All right," Molly said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my friend the beta, who looked over this chapter three times! The third time it was given a clean bill of health. ;)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team gathers. It turns out that the plan for this job is not quite as routine as expected.

"Your mind is the scene of the crime" - _Inception_ tagline

—————

Thursday. The small team had entered separately to gather in a dental cleaning room, presumably so they could present a united front to the office staff. The Holmes brothers eyed each other across the tiny office, the space broken only by a reclining chair, and mercifully empty of any sharp implements.

"Hmph," Sherlock said, barely audible as Mycroft entered. "Look, John, it's Mycroft 'I bought the airline' Holmes," he drawled.

Mycroft glared at him in that understated way that only the Holmes boys had perfected.  
"For heaven's sake. Just because it was nicknamed 'Bond Air' doesn't mean that it was the entire airline. As I've already explained, we didn't buy the entirety of Flyaway Airlines, just that plane. It seemed the most expedient solution if it was going to explode."

"Close enough," Sherlock said poisonously.

"Can we get on?" Lestrade cut in, clearly seeing that this could on for hours. "Afraid we can't keep him under until tomorrow for a morning appointment; his wife'll be missing him, even if nobody else does."

He had managed to attract the attention of John, at least, and continued on as though he had everyone's.

"Right. I'm going to tell the dentist to follow me out right now, flash a badge around, promise he can ask someone to watch over the patient while he's away, and then we can--"

"No need; already taken care of," Sherlock said, sounding bored. "He won't interfere."

"He _won’t inter_ \--“ Lestrade started to ask, incredulous.

"Owes me a favor," Sherlock explained.

"Oh, that's just great," Lestrade said. "And when exactly were you going to share this with me?"

"I just did."

"You did. You certainly did." Lestrade was glaring at him but Sherlock refused to meet his eyes; instead, he was checking his PASIV over for what had to be the fourth time.

"Okay, everybody, apparently the doc _won’t interfere_ , so let's just get in and get out as quickly as possible. We'll stay physically close to the subject, we'll stick to the usual if he wakes, music at five minutes out dreamtime. Sherlock is on the box today, Mycroft is on the button and the music. I'll hang back, Sherlock, but I won't hesitate to get in there if it looks like I'm needed, all right?"

John expected Sherlock to bristle at Lestrade taking control of the situation this way, but to his surprise Sherlock only nodded and said "You won't be," before picking the PASIV up in one hand and a plastic bag of compatible vials in the other. Each vial, John assumed, contained whatever homemade concoction Dr. Hooper had mixed up for him. John told himself he was completely comfortable with this.

In the dental surgeon's workroom, the air was colder but the subject was already asleep. Several machines nearby mapped out his vitals in little lines dancing across screens, and various cords ran from underneath a paper bib clipped to his collar. The man himself was unremarkable; a little on the scrawny side, with thinning, brownish hair and a dark suit. He looked strangely out of place amidst all the equipment, unconscious in the dental chair and utterly unaware of the scrutiny directed at him.

Sherlock opened the PASIV case on the floor beside the chair. Lestrade pulled out a lead without looking too closely, aiming an assessing stare at the sleeping form of their subject.

"The black lead is for the dreamer, Lestrade. I know it's been a while," Sherlock said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Fuck off," Lestrade retorted, grabbing another.

Sherlock smirked and busied himself with taking Monkford's pulse, while Lestrade turned to John with an 'all business' look that made John feel as though he'd been called out by a teacher. John braced himself; they had very little to go on for this job and he didn't want to seem incompetent. Lestrade cut right to the chase.

"So what's your plan?" he asked. John took the black lead that Lestrade was holding out to him and rolled the end of it between thumb and forefinger, not meeting his eyes.

"Well, I've read the file through, cover to cover, twice," he began.

"Not much to go on, is there?"

"No, not much. We need this guy to incriminate himself," he said, nodding at the man in the chair, "which means a lot of the setting will have to come from him, too. I know he gave blood recently since there's a record of the time and place, so we'll start at a donation center. But he's been coached, I think, in not leaving a trail."

Lestrade was nodding. "Yeah, I know how that goes. Sounds like most of the cases I've been working that have the Spider's stamp."

"Spider?" John repeated, raising his eyebrows. Greg looked embarrassed.

"Yeah - sorry, that's just what I call him since I haven't got a name. There are a _lot_ of cases where I know he's pulling the strings, so it, er. Felt appropriate." Greg adopted a rather stubborn expression, but John could still see the embarrassment hiding underneath. It made him more human, somehow.

"Yeah," John said, growing more uncomfortable rather than less so. "Well, once we've started, the team will just hint at this mastermind character, get him and his schemes on Monkford's mind. The, uh, Spider is incredibly nebulous, as you know, so that's going to be a delicate operation." 

He swallowed and looked at the device Sherlock had checked and re-checked, and John suspected it wasn't only to have something to do. "Then Mycroft is going to switch dreamer control to Monkford,” he continued, trying to sound confident. “Then we see what happens."

"My God," Lestrade said quietly, his eyebrows at his hairline.

John ground his teeth together. "Yeah."

"I guess -" Lestrade began hesitantly, but the sentence ended before it had truly begun. "Well, obviously you know how dangerous that is," he concluded at last.

"I do," John said, nodding. "But I don't believe, for this one, that we have a choice. We'll just have to stick together, get out as fast as we can, and hope that things don't get out of control. Having Mycroft looking out for us topside is actually much better than I ever would have imagined it would be. Sherlock thinks so, too, though I doubt you'll get him to admit it."

"Naturally not," Lestrade agreed. "Gutsy move."

John wasn't sure whether that was meant to be a compliment, but he decided to take it as one and nodded.

"Still interested in coming along?" he asked, only half joking. In answer, Lestrade grabbed the tape out of the case, tore a strip off with his teeth, and grinned, then handed the roll over and lay down to wrap the lead and get comfortable.

"Okay," John said, returning the grin. "Okay then." 

He caught a glimpse of Sherlock as he lay down, eyes darting between the two of them. John was probably imagining that they were narrowed slightly. He glanced down at the PASIV mainly to have somewhere else to focus, and saw that while the drip rate was turned up a little higher than his usual, his own drug slot contained the familiar bottle of generic Somnacin. In fact, there was only one homemade concoction. He pretended not to notice; there were often unknown drugs in the device, and 'not noticing' was becoming habit. Potentially a dangerous one.

The team was all ready to go, so clearly this wasn't the time for a discussion with Sherlock, but it was with some reservation that he closed his eyes. Mycroft counted slowly down from five with the tip of his umbrella poised in a nonchalant manner over the button, then there was the familiar 'whoosh' noise - and then they were in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The PASIV Device makes an appearance in this chapter, so if you're not familiar, some info on it is here. Many thanks as always to my beta, who makes incredible cakes. I'm not even a huge fan of cake, so that's saying something.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a _very good_ reason that the world of the dream isn't created by the untrained.

"But in my dream, you play by my rules." -Saito, _Inception_

—————

John was looking at Greg, kitted out in a nurse's uniform, over a plastic-covered, padded chair only subtly different from the one in the dentist's office. There was an IV lead in his gloved hand - lucky, he thought, that he had hooked himself up to many a PASIV and knew how this worked. Monkford was in the chair, in almost the same position he was in topside, which was convenient.

"I don't like needles," he was saying, "but for the good of others." Monkford presented his arm.

"Yes, you'll be saving lives, sir," John promised. The man was no doubt already planning his con and had a fairly good idea of where this 'donation' would be going. John did his best to keep his disgust from showing on his face. He started up the IV with an efficiency born of long practice, and blood started to fill the bag on a table at his side. Mr. Monkford sighed the sigh of a suffering martyr and turned his head away.

John glanced up at Greg again, who had apparently just noticed his uniform and was examining it closely, and took real stock of his surroundings. The large room of the donation center was generic, with some posters on the walls and a few occupied (and unoccupied) chairs in a neat row. The posters extolled the virtues of donation, or encouraged healthy habits like hand-washing or covering a sneeze. Every single person featured in them was the same man as in that grainy police photo of the Spider. John found it disturbing, and he'd designed the damn thing. Monkford, however, didn't appear to notice.

People were having conversations at nearby tables, there were several doors along the walls with lights showing through the crack underneath, and there were papers and medical equipment in organized piles here and there. He spotted Sherlock across the room, also dressed as a nurse but ignoring the donors as he examined a window and then, disturbingly, moved to the pile of IV needles to bend down and stare closely at them.

"This will take just a few - oh, nearly finished," John said to their mark. The bag was nearly full - unlikely, but given their unrevealing location he was grateful for a little speed.

"I think that will do it," Lestrade said, turning back from a nearby table and brandishing cotton and tape. "If you'll just apply some pressure - oh, it's already stopped, how handy," he said, turning a significant look on John. He put tape around the cotton anyway. 

Monkford had gone eerily silent; he didn't appear to be seeing them at all, and was already turning and sitting up. He was staring at one of the doors that presumably led into a side office. John looked to Sherlock, who had, thank goodness, given up his study of the medical supplies and had instead lasered in on Monkford and his bizarre fixation on the side door. 

Monkford got up and walked straight to the door as though he didn't even see them. _Most likely,_ John thought, _if Mycroft has already switched the leads, he doesn’t. Not clearly, at least._

_Follow him_ , Sherlock mouthed, but it wasn't necessary; they were already trailing along behind him. Monkford opened the door to the sound of - some sort of drill, John thought, listening hard. He cast one more quick glance at their fearless leader, who didn't appear to notice them at all as he was focused entirely on Monkford. There could be anything behind this door, John had time to think, rather angrily… but he still stepped through.

The drilling sound, it turned out, came not from a drill at all but an electric wrench or air gun or… something. They were in a large garage with several cars up on lifts. There were a couple of men in oil-stained jumpsuits, one wearing a huge, clear eye shield that covered half his face.

"What on earth," John said, not quite a question, as Greg followed him through and they took stock of their new surroundings. There were pieces of cars here and there, but overall the place had an orderly look to it, with busy and competent employees largely ignoring them. John glanced at Greg and saw that he was wearing one of the gray jumpsuits. A quick look down at himself confirmed that he was, as well. He was about to comment when Sherlock nearly bowled them over, following Monkford toward a small office with a window overlooking the shop.

"I think we're supposed to look like we're working on the cars," Greg supplied, raising a brow at John.

"Yeah," John agreed, and without another word both entirely ignored the cars and followed Sherlock toward the office. Both he and Monkford had already vanished inside. They pressed their ears to the door; Monkford was speaking.

"No, I don't just want any car, it has to be something I would normally rent. A nice car. He said I was to have whatever, did you not hear?"

"Reasonable," said the man at the desk (plumper than Monkford, John saw through the window - relaxed, not as carefully dressed). "My contact said whatever you would reasonably get."

"Your contact isn't the top man, though, is he?" Monkford asked, rather haughtily.

"My contact isn't _him_ , if that's what you're asking," the seated man said, dangerously quiet. "But she's close enough." 

Monkford flailed a bit.

"Well if I'm going to die in a car, I want it to have some class," he said, voice only a little unsteady. "How about one of those?" He gestured through the window, almost catching Greg's face peering through it, and indicated the cars on the lifts. Greg followed where he was pointing and whistled softly.

"Jags," he explained in a whisper to John. "At least Monkford has taste, I'll give him that."

John, who knew absolutely nothing about cars and cared even less, didn't comment. He pressed an ear to the door again instead, though he didn't miss the nasty looks the other mechanics were beginning to shoot their way.

"Oh, for-- you aren't going to _die_ in it," the seated man was saying derisively, and John tuned out their argument to make a series of furtive warning gestures at Greg, who nodded. _I see them._

"A fancy car might attract attention, I believe Mr. Ewart is saying," came a third, unfamiliar voice. John turned his attention to the conversation again; he had completely missed this third person, who was well out of view from their window. It was like he'd come out of nowhere. John thought he recognized the style, and grimaced.

"Something that wouldn't beckon to unwanted eyes, but is still very nice," said the unknown speaker in a thin, reedy voice.

"He's right," said the seated man - Ewart, apparently. "If you rent a Mazda, it'll be less obvious that the whole thing is a setup." Ewart looked over his Dell desktop at his 'assistant' - Sherlock playing a part, no doubt - and twitched his fingers at him. The man finally moved into view: sixty if he was a day, black-framed glasses, tiny, and giving the impression of being a little stooped despite rigid upright posture.

"Yes, sir," Sherlock said reedily, pushing his glasses up.

John's eyes widened. He'd known the man had built his reputation on being a good forger, but he'd never seen him this fast and seamless. And he must have been there the whole time to get Monkford's acceptance; changing appearance almost in front of the mark. Within seconds, certainly. He'd seen him be excellent, but this rather defied logic. _Good thing we're dreaming instead,_ he thought, right on the edge of an ill-timed fit of giggles. He forced himself to calm.

"See if those RX-8s we got in last week are ready for rental yet," Ewart was saying. "They should be just about finished with the, er, _processing_.”

The way he said 'processing' made John suspect there was a step for 'filing off the VIN numbers' somewhere in there, but that wasn't their purpose just at the moment.

"And see about those tickets to Bogotá; I want to be sure there are no surprises. Just be sure all the papers are in order, you know the drill." Sherlock - the _assistant_ \- nodded.

"I need to call my wife, update her on the plan," Monkford sniffed.

"Fine, fine," Ewart said, and Monkford reached into his pocket, already turning.

A small, brown-and-white dog ran through the shop, barking raucously, and disappeared beneath an unidentified bush, heavy with bunches of purple berries. John’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t seem to form the words he needed, and he turned slowly, as the air became thick and hazy with dream delerium. Nina Simone started singing on the shop's loudspeaker, and the metal roof was suddenly replaced by heavy, raw beams of wood, as though this was an old-fashioned barn. No one in the shop noticed any of this; they had stopped work, for the most part, and were occupied with glaring at Greg and John.

John turned back, infinitely slowly and rather desperately to Greg, who mercifully still looked like himself (aside from the half-mechanic, half-painter's smock he was wearing).

 "Good timing," he said, and John just stared at him until Greg gestured at his head, and he realized that the music he was hearing wasn't coming through the loudspeaker. It was inside him.

 It was _Sinnerman_ , of course, why hadn't he realized; the wake-up countdown. He stared at the bush, which now had bunches of purple flowers rather than berries, and tried to follow a logical course as he'd been taught in training. Mycroft had made the switch, yes, they'd found what they needed. Monkford was the dreamer, uncontrolled, and - something odd was happening now - things were a little off - the dream was becoming unstructured. He suspected that he was getting lost in this guy's mind, and he needed to get out _right-the-fuck-now_.

"You okay?" Greg asked, and John could make out a frown but the words were slow and faint.

"Shoot me," John said, or thought he said; things were getting very... melty, all of a sudden, and he couldn't be sure. Greg looked alarmed.

_(Where you gonna run to?)_

"No gun," Greg said very clearly, noting John's distress, and turned very suddenly. John saw him picking up a large wrench before it melted away, and had the stability of thought to hope that Greg knew what he was doing, or this was really going to hurt.

Greg came around to John's side, near the thinnest point of his skull. John could already see how this murder would look: himself broken on the ground with blood all around his head; hair sopping wet with it; wide, empty eyes; a gaping crack in his skull hidden by dark hair; and - what had this dreaming man even seen to make John imagine this? He shuddered, then braced himself. Greg nodded and drew back the wrench, and vanished.

The wrench clattered to the ground.

_(all on that day)_

John stared dumbly at the place Greg had been standing. Well, he'd just have to do it himself, wouldn't he. He staggered forward, but had no clear idea where he was going. There was darkness up ahead there, it might be nice. Something deadly. Might be nice.

"John."

Something deadly. Might be nice.

"John," the deep voice said again. John turned, a little annoyed, and saw Sherlock looking like Sherlock, and behind him was the shop, only a little distorted, and it was literally the best thing John had ever seen.

_(I run to the river; it was boiling)_

"Sh'rlock," he said, much more clearly than he'd managed a moment ago. Had he been talking? It was difficult to remember.

"Lestrade was just awakened, John, it's our turn in just a few seconds now. Time is stretched here, remember, but you only have to hold on for a few seconds."

That made sense, right?

John staggered over and made a grab for him, managing to snag his fingers on a coat button, then pulled himself in as though he was reeling in a particularly stubborn fish. His hands sought out the rough material of the coat, in particular the back of the coat. He held on tightly, and even in this illogical state he wouldn't allow himself a bit of shame for it.

_(please hide me, Lord)_

If he was honest - and in his head, at least, he usually was - it wasn't only because of safety that he was clinging to Sherlock. In dreams, he rationalized, you don't have to be that same person you are when awake. Dreams had a different sort of logic, and one could do all sorts of crazy, impossible things, like breathing in the strange scent of wool and soporific chemicals that even in sleep were ground into the fibers of that coat. In dreams it was all right for your illegal business partner / flatmate to wrap his arms around you to keep you focused; it's not like it would follow you into the waking world. Returning the embrace was just a precaution. Just----

They were awake. Greg was peering worriedly down at him, the lead was on the floor by his arm, and Sherlock was on the opposite side of the room being tended to by Mycroft. Well, by Mycroft's umbrella. A quick glance from each of them ascertained that that the other was all right, and then they quickly looked away, avoiding further eye contact. It was only the usual; John absolutely did not feel any disappointment, and his bad leg was absolutely not bothering him. He nodded at Greg and climbed to his feet, ignoring the twinge of pain.

"Thanks," he said to the floor. Greg nodded as though he had said so to his face, and he may have looked a bit strange - John couldn't tell through his peripheral vision.

"You heard enough?" Sherlock asked, sounding his usual, haughty self, and Greg looked pensive.

"Maybe; I'll pull you in tomorrow, how's that?"

"Fine. John." With that, Sherlock picked up the PASIV and marched out.

John nodded at the rest of the team, who just stared back at him.

They got a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some dream action! Not in a good way.
> 
> Many thanks to my endlessly patient beta.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the job, Mrs. Hudson visits. Also, denial isn't just a river in Egypt, as they say.

"Out. I need some air." -John, TGG

—————

"Nice work, changing so fast," John said after they'd ridden in silence for a few minutes, each lost in his own thoughts. "I didn't even realize you were in there until I heard that third voice."

"I _am_ a forger, John," Sherlock said, as though John had forgotten or hadn't noticed.

"Yeah, but I didn't know you were that good. It was brilliant. Amazing."

Sherlock didn't say anything in response, but he looked considering. No, not considering. Flattered.

"That's not what most people say," he said at last. "They're… frightened. Disturbed. Certainly not impressed." He stared at John as though he was a newly discovered city-dwelling creature, and Sherlock was trying to work him out. John cleared his throat.

"So how did you get into that so, er, seamlessly?"

"It was simple enough to see that they were up to no good, judging by their conversation, and Monkford had never met Ewart's assistant. Or if he had, there were suddenly two. One of whom was me."

"And how the _hell_ did you know his name?"

"He has a business card holder on his desk, John," Sherlock said, as though this should have been obvious to anyone with eyes. Maybe it should.

Sherlock turned back to look out the window, and John rubbed absently at his bad leg, which was conveniently beginning to ache. He suspected that Sherlock was seeing much more of the view than John was. His thoughts were probably very far from the well-worn groove that John's were pacing, up and down, back and forth, attraction and pragmatism, seduction and rationality. But they didn't talk about it, not ever. In dreams you didn't have to be the same person, wasn't that the lesson? John had been doing this longer than anyone; surely he should know. He stared at the city, and mused, and didn't come to any conclusion.

Once home, Sherlock was even more prickly than usual. After he'd snapped at John for the fourth time (topics: idiocy, food, sleeplessness, idiocy), mouth set in a firm line, he announced he needed to get out to think since John was so loud, flouncing away in that ridiculous, swirly coat. John had thought that Sherlock did most of his thinking in the flat, hence him being constantly underfoot, which suggested he just needed to get away from John in order to sulk properly.

John rather angrily turned on a football match. One team was really blowing away the other; he watched play for a while and could see that they were terribly mismatched. He could hear Sherlock's 'Dull. Boring. Predictable.' and realized that in this case, he would agree with him. He viciously hit the button to turn the volume up.

"Hoo-hoo," said his landlady, poking her head in at the same time as her ridiculously tiny knock.

"Sorry, Mrs. H," John said, turning down the volume guiltily.

"Oh, don't worry about that, dear. Gripping match, is it?" She glanced up at the television, but John hit the power button too quickly.

"Er, no, it's a blowout, actually. Fucking Chelsea." Belatedly, it occurred to him that cursing in front of his landlady was a bit like cursing in front of his mum, and his terrible mood was no excuse. He tensed, but she didn't seem to object.

"Oh, yes," Mrs. Hudson said sadly, shaking her head as though John had just told her one of the Underground lines she never used was closed. "Has Sherlock gone off to visit the grocery? Not the chemist's, I hope."

John tried not to let his rejection show on his face, but it was impossible.

"He said he needed to think," he said shortly.

"Oh, yes, of course. He always wanders off like this after a job," she assured him. "If it's not one reason it's another; you know what he's like."  
She patted his shoulder, and to his mild surprise, John did feel a bit better. Now that he thought about it rationally, Sherlock did have a habit of vanishing once a job was complete.

"Well, we have a few minutes to ourselves, then. Why don't you come downstairs, dear, and we can have a nice chat and some tea?"

"Um. Sure," John said, heaving himself out of his chair. Out of habit, he also grabbed his cane.

"We never get to talk when it's just you and me, do we. It's only when there's a third party present. As if we need a chaperone!" she joked, leading the way down the steps. John's occasional limp - presumably psychosomatic if you believed his genius flatmate - took this moment to make itself known in an unforgettable fashion, and he narrowly avoided falling from the top step. He gamely clung to the banister, though, when she turned around, and a slight limp was all that was noticeable as he followed her down.

"Sorry, dear, I didn't realize your leg was acting up," she said, clasping her hands to her chest in front of her own door and then reaching out, rather uselessly.

"No, it's fine, Mrs. H, it wasn't until just now. I've got the cane with me; I'll just sit down for a while," he said, waving her outstretched hand away.

"All right, we'll get you in and into a chair - just the one at the kitchen table, that's fine; I'll get the tea," she said firmly, holding the door and then following his progress.

He was irrationally frustrated at his leg - it figured that it would do this NOW - but he sat at the table with a relieved sigh and leaned his cane against the edge.

"You're right, we've never really had a proper talk," he said, trying to put the limp out of his mind while she busied herself with the teapot. "Think that's intentional?" he asked with a smile.

"Oh, probably, dear," she said, still with her back turned. "He's awfully funny about allowing the people he's worked with to meet. You probably haven't had a chance to get to know Greg, either - er, Sergeant Lestrade, I mean, must remember to call him that." She turned to look sympathetically at him while John fluctuated between surprise that she'd _worked_ with Sherlock and irrational jealousy that she, too, knew the former architect as 'Greg.' Of course she did, he was probably over here quite a bit while she was Sherlock's landlady and he was paying the rent who knew how. John realized he was grinding his teeth, and made a conscious effort to stop.

"So, you worked with Sherlock," he tried.

"A bit," she said, "but mostly I was something of a keeper. And a chemist, of course." John's eyebrows rose. He had heard absolutely nothing of this. She set down a very nice tea set on the table, and helped herself to the sugar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a _terrible_ place to end it. The next bit will go up in just a little bit - Word is playing merry hell with my formatting, but I'm trying to get it fixed before posting. This chapter turned into a monster and I was going to split it, then there was no good place to, and that turned into a monster too, which was ridiculous, and argh.
> 
> This is tl;dr - next bit soon, couple hours or less.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Mrs. Hudson have a little chat, which reveals some surprising history on both sides.

"I need someone who's as good as I was." -Cobb, _Inception_

—————

"I was, er, _recruited_ by his brother, Mycroft," Mrs. Hudson continued. "Very nice young man, though a bit stiff, I thought. Said his brother Sherlock was in need of some assistance and he was using sleep medicine for 'recreational purposes.' Since I had a _talent_ with chemicals, as he said, he wanted me to help to keep an eye on him." She took a sip and nodded for him to do the same.

"So you agreed," he said, raising his cup to his lips.

"Mycroft's methods were a bit unorthodox, but yes, I agreed. In part because I felt a bit sorry for this lost brother of his. I didn't know the half of it."

"Lost?" John prompted. He felt that he was prying a little, but then his anger flared up again and any attendant guilt burned right away.

"Oh yes," she said sadly. "'Experimenting,' Sherlock said, but I would call it 'overdosing.' The first time I met him - well, _found_ him, I didn't think he was going to wake up. Mycroft and I both tried. Even went through the three Ss, but none of them worked."

John tried to look knowledgeable about 'the three Ss,' but was aware that he looked entirely blank. Civilian terminology was often completely lost on him.

"Shaking, shouting, stimulants," Mrs. Hudson explained, nodding as though this was obviously something he was already familiar with. He was grateful for the clarification.

"So what did you do?" John was possessed of an irrational urge to go be certain that Sherlock was awake, though he had no idea where he was.

"I was able to cook something up," she said. "Only took about half an hour; it's a good job I'd been to get supplies just the day before. One injection of that and he was right as rain. Well, eventually."

John was fairly certain he didn't want to know.

"He's not anything like that now, as far as I can tell," he offered.

"I'm so glad," she said, and she reached out to touch John's hand. "It's been a job getting him there, I can tell you. I put together most of his sleep medicines after that. Not for the jobs, of course, but for everyday use. For sleeping normally, not that he does that much. The things that Greg used to try, goodness!" She laughed heartily, but John was trying to keep his expression neutral and didn't join in.

"Something I could try?" he said after a pause. It was all he could think of that didn't sound positively awful.

"Oh, he had recordings of soft music, and Sherlock would just end up critiquing the musicians. He had all these home remedies, but you have to at least _try_ to sleep for those to work, and they just didn't. He tried foods briefly before realizing that it was easier to soothe Sherlock into a suitably sleepy mood if he wasn't sulking about eating. He tried lacing drinks with things that weren’t nearly powerful enough, then various kinds of white noise, blackout curtains, but none of it worked. Finally, he asked for my help."

John absently poured himself some more tea from the pot Mrs. Hudson had made and added milk from the creamer jar, fascinated despite his misgivings. "Hadn't Mycroft asked you for the same?" he asked.

"He asked me to be another set of eyes, but not for drugs directly. I used that mixture I’d made to wake him up, but it was rather an emergency, and I hadn't done it since. But that poor boy, Greg I mean, was at his wits' end. I told him that Sherlock's brother had asked me to keep an eye on him, and something from a chemist like me might go over easier than another remedy. Sherlock wasn't sleeping much for jobs at that point; a few hours a week and nothing else."

"A few… a _week_? No wonder Greg was desperate."

"Yes, well, I was able to put him under, so that problem was solved, but he soon demanded mixtures that were stronger. Insisted that he was bored, and that the only place he could mount any sort of challenge was in his own mind. I'd have thought he was boasting if he hadn't looked so desperate. Lost, like his brother had said. The poor dear."

She paused, absorbed in her memory.

"You did it, though," John said. "Helped him to sleep."

"Yes," she said, shaking out of her reverie. "And tried to create substitutes for things that were making him even more sick. All those chemicals he was trying, they weren't meant to be combined." She shook her head sadly. "I know it was a great deal off Greg's mind to have someone else on his side. Sherlock is very close to all his architects, as I'm sure you've seen."

"Close, right," John said.

"He doesn't trust many people. He must have had a good feeling about you." She looked him up and down, as much of him as was visible above the tabletop, at least, and smiled approvingly.

"He told me he needed a flatshare."

"Oh, he did. But it wasn't to pay the rent."

John looked surprised, he could feel it - but he'd rather guessed that.

"When Greg hit it off with Sherlock's brother,” Mrs. Hudson continued, “it was all right at first. But I wasn't having anything to do with the two of them hanging around here; Sherlock's brother upsets him, and he's hard enough to deal with when he's happy."

"So… Sherlock was all right with Greg just taking up with his brother? I mean they weren't… you said they were close…"

"Lovers?" she guessed, taking pity on him. "No. At least, I very much doubt it. Sherlock thought Greg had terrible taste when Mycroft started coming by, of course, but he was very careful to keep it out of their relationship as - well, architect and sometime-forger. Sherlock rather defies definition."

John barked a short laugh, and nodded, pouring more to drink.

"Now here I've been going on and on and haven't let you get a word in. Tell me about yourself, Mr. Watson."

"John, please. 'Mr. Watson' sounds like my dad." She nodded acquiescence, but said nothing.

"Er. Not much to tell. I was an architect topside, not bad at it, joined a firm just out of school and was on the verge, I guess, of making a name, when the army got me. "

"Got you?" she prompted politely.

"When I was recruited. I was getting frustrated," he admitted. "I was too impatient for what I was doing and it was, er, pretty obvious to anybody looking closely. I was cutting corners and you just can't do that. Not if you want a building to be stable and last more than a few months, anyway. So when this sort of creating things was suggested, well." He shook his head. Odd, he thought vaguely, that he was just opening up like this. He hadn't even told Sherlock all of it, though the nosy bastard probably knew it anyway.

"I jumped at the chance. They told me there was a new sleep drug they were working on at Baskerville, very specialized, for dream sharing. Somnacin, they called it. You'd sleep instantly, share the dream using the PASIV, and it would heighten the reality, the focus. The army needed a professional to build training scenarios for them; they said they would tell me what they needed, and I never looked back. It was maybe a month or two before I started asking for more, creating scenarios in the field, trying to ensnare the enemy. I was good at it. But there were plenty of architects waiting to take my place when I got shot," he concluded, rather bitterly.

"You didn't want to go back to regular architecture after you were discharged?"

"No. Not at all. Being an architect topside wasn’t enough once I'd done it in dreams. It's like nothing else, an instant rush, and combined with the adrenaline from those missions, it--" He broke off.

"I did try it once," he said at last. "More than once. It was awful." She frowned at him.

"Why more than once?"

"I… thought that was what I was supposed to do."

Mrs. Hudson looked at him with obvious sympathy, and he surged forward in his tale, mainly so that she would stop.

"So I came back here, wasn't sure what I wanted to do, and Sherlock found me through a mutual acquaintance. Not very interesting." He blinked, then with a start he stared into his cup.

"What is _in_ this?"

"Oh, this and that; never you mind, dear," she said, waving a hand. John supposed that she was drinking it, too; it couldn't be _that_ bad. Unless the cup itself was laced. He frowned at it.

"At least you were well-used to the practice; that's a blessing."

John was distracted, still looking at the cup. "I changed totems, but I knew the basics, yeah. And a few tricks I'd picked up, like switching dream control. Now I use the bullet from my shoulder as my totem, and if it looks all pretty like the ones under glass in the sitting room, I know that something's wrong."

She didn't say a thing to that. Obviously she'd seen those bullets under glass. Probably dusted around them.

"Do you have a totem?" he asked, hoping to regain a little balance in the conversation.

"Oh, yes; I have to go under once in a while, sometimes to pull your flatmate out by his ear," she replied, her expression turning determined.

"Can I ask what you use?"

She smiled unexpectedly, clearly proud of this. "The inscription on my wedding ring. I have to take it off to check, of course, but I don't have the sort of urgency to it that you boys do."

"Oh. I thought, er." Frankly, he was surprised she still wore it, but. Sentiment? Even he didn't understand that one.

"My husband was American, you know," she continued. "Extradited. He really was a terrible man. But he always did have a way with words."

"I bet," John said uncomfortably. Mrs. Hudson appeared to see this and gave him one more piercing look.

"I believe I hear your wayward flatmate," she said, and John started. The sound of the violin was drifting faintly through the ceiling.

"I didn't even hear him come in," he admitted. "He can be so da-- quiet when he wants to be." He'd nearly said something else rather rude, and under the circumstances had stopped himself just in time. She only hummed and looked significantly at his cup.

"Thank you for the tea," he said, and didn't add _and whatever else was in there that I couldn't taste._ He was profoundly glad she was on their side. "And for the chat. I guess I'll be going up to see if he's eating tonight."

"Of course," she said, rising as he did and reaching forward to hand him his cane. "Any time you want to pop down, dear, you make yourself at home. Goodness knows he's difficult; I don't know how you've managed."

"I get by," John said, smiling, and crossed to the door, hardly needing the cane at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take that, formatting. 
> 
> I know my beta friend was just as frustrated with trying to find a convenient break point in this chapter as I was. She was still able to make 2 suggestions about this and beta the whole mess, so as usual, to her a huge thank you.
> 
> The action ramps up again next time! It only took 10K words to get to the meat of the story - that's good, right?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chat after the chat, and John goes off for a date. As we've seen, that is rarely a good idea.

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." -Eames, _Inception_

\----------

It was nearly two weeks before John found the courage to bring up to Sherlock a little of what he'd learned during his chat with Mrs. Hudson. 

"So," he began. Even he knew this was a sure sign that the forthcoming topic was likely to be uncomfortable for at least one of them; if it was uncomfortable for Sherlock, the subject would be instantly changed. Sherlock looked up from where he was sitting on the floor, rearranging the books in stacks before him into a completely different (but just as incomprehensible) order.

"I hear the landlady used to mix chemicals for you," John said, rather awkwardly.

"She was very good, John," Sherlock explained. "Very, very good. It's a shame you never got to try any." John ignored this, especially as he was fairly certain he'd inadvertently tried something not-sleep-related when he went for tea. 

"Better than Molly Hooper? Wouldn't have expected you to go for second best," John joked, before he'd really thought it through. "I mean. Of course, I wouldn't claim to be--" 

"Don't be ridiculous, John," Sherlock interrupted. "I never join forces with anyone unless they are excellent." He climbed to his feet and fetched a wrench for… some reason. The conversation, John understood, was at an end. 

Lestrade had arrested Ian Monkford and his wife, as well as the (real) Mr. Ewart, but as none of them had had direct contact with the man in the photo, they were all surprisingly unhelpful. Sherlock, of course, demanded he be allowed to question them himself; because of his brother's dubious influence, he was allowed to, and was disturbingly good at picking out facts without being threatening in any way. But as none of the people arrested had met or spoken to the Spider, and their contacts had a tendency to vanish, even Sherlock's interrogation didn't turn up much, which infuriated him. John could have predicted this was going to happen, if it would have done any good. 

Sherlock proceeded to throw himself into jobs involving people known to be linked with this man. Fortunately (or perhaps not so fortunately), the Spider, as John's mind stubbornly insisted on calling him, used dream sharing widely himself. Evidence was easier to find through dreams because of this, but all of John's little dream-sharing tricks were probably well-known to him.

Sherlock brooded, and Greg sent them whatever he came across that was known to be related. The Monkford case had given him more access, but even a higher number of cases was not enough to pacify Sherlock. Lestrade even helped them when he could; their previous success meant the authorities were more willing to look the other way. John was pretty sure there was something about this that wasn't quite on, though he was glad enough to be on the right side of the law (well, _ish_ ) to look past it. The Met was fast becoming their biggest customer; they broke up smuggling rings, stopped murder sprees, recovered stolen goods. They got a name for the Spider at last: Moriarty. They didn't get much else. 

\--

"I won't be home for tea, Sherlock," John said, gathering up coat, keys, phone, wallet. "Going to Natalie's, may not be back." Sherlock shot him a bored glance from his chair. He was currently dissecting some poor man's history, as the man had the misfortune to be on a talk show. John reckoned it was the man's own fault for agreeing to be a guest on a talk show.

"You've gone through girlfriends like some people go through takeaway leftovers," Sherlock said with a rather acerbic glare. "Good for about a week at most, and then into the bin." 

John narrowed his eyes at him. "You said my girlfriends were boring."

"I said the _teacher_ was boring, John, try to keep up." John only quirked a corner of his mouth at him, which he knew Sherlock hated. He also knew it was a difficult expression to resist, and the two were possibly not unrelated.

Sensing the impending stand-off, John heaved a put-upon sigh. "All right, directly, yes. But you implied that all of them were boring at some point or another."

"Well, it was true. All of them were."

"Even the forensic psychoanalyst?" he tried.

"She was interesting for about ten minutes," Sherlock allowed graciously. "But then she was boring."

"Right," John said, fast on the way to being completely fed up. "I'm off, then."

"I'm off, too," Sherlock announced. "We need milk."

" _You're_ getting--" John stopped himself. "All right. I get semi-skimmed, if you care about that." He fled downstairs and out the door before Sherlock could shout after him anything else utterly bizarre or utterly infuriating.

It was rather late already; the streets were not well-lit, but they weren't empty. A young man in a hooded jacket strode down the opposite side of the street, a taxi with a fare inside passed by, a man pulled across the safety fence on his curry shop to finish locking up. A couple passed him, hands locked, with that slightly absent look that meant they had no idea what was going on outside of their shared bubble. John caught a wisp of conversation about some film they'd seen as they passed, and sank a little further inside himself. Natalie was a great person; he had absolutely no reservations about saying that. But he knew that the two of them would never share a bubble like that couple. 

He tried not to go too deeply into it, but there were times - like now - when he let himself think a little too much about that bubble, and it wasn't Natalie he thought would be the other inhabitant. There were too many things missing from their relationship that he could find elsewhere, and too many indications that this wasn't going to get any better. If he had any sense of fairness at all, this should be their last evening as a couple. Not a breakup he'd shed many tears over, he thought, engrossed in his brooding. 

That was his mistake. He hadn't been paying a lot of attention; if he had, he might have noticed the sniper in the shadows. Unlikely, though. The man was very good. 

He registered a sharp pain in his shoulder, looked down to see the tiny tail of a gun dart poking out of it, and his vision went dark.

\--

John came to with only a slight headache in a small, concrete room. Concrete walls, concrete ceiling, concrete floor, and - at least thirty small television sets. They were stacked on top of each other, piled next to each other - all facing toward him with a nasty mess of cables snaking out the back, tangling together into a snarl of black rope and winding out into, presumably, the hallway.

The televisions showed what looked like CCTV footage, with a different shot in each monitor. There were many silent corridors, as concrete and colorless as this place. Dark streets. A metal detector. Some unidentifiable lumps of metal. A chair. And, disturbingly, the sitting room of 221B was visible in at least two monitors.

He frowned at it; it was empty at the moment, thank goodness. There was no motion on any of the monitors, anywhere. All he could hear was the faint buzz of electricity and a far-off dripping noise, so he took stock of his surroundings. The room was well-lit by an overhead fluorescent, but there really was not much to see; he couldn't be certain of his coordination after whatever drug had been in that dart, but he was tied securely to a plush red chair so the question was largely moot. A matching, empty chair sat next to him, also facing the monitors. There was nothing else in the little room, just concrete. It may as well have been a repurposed parking garage.

"Hello?" he called loudly, but there was only his own echoing voice in response. Not even footfalls. He shifted after a moment; really, if he was kept here all night, he'd need a handy toilet. The thought sent him into a few low, stressed giggles, which lasted only a few seconds as he noticed movement on one of the monitors. It was Sherlock, coming into their sitting room. John couldn't help but notice the marked absence of a bag which could conceivably contain milk.

"Hello!" a jovial voice exclaimed, unseen, and John's head snapped up. The owner must be in the corridor just outside - must have been for a while, since John didn't hear him approach. Then again, he'd been rather distracted. John's attention flickered between the monitor, where Sherlock was unconcernedly heading straight for the kitchen, and the direction of the voice. Its owner took his time coming into the little room, but when he did, he _sauntered_. 

"Moriarty," John said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I hate myself sometimes.   
> Beta: Your compassion is overwhelming.
> 
> So, we've had that chat already. Anyway, you already know that Moriarty will be evil and fabulous, and probably in something designer.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It becomes clear exactly what on earth all those screens are for, and Moriarty is both a genius and a tiny bit deranged.

"James Moriarty. The most dangerous criminal mind the world has ever seen." -Mycroft, _TRF_

\----------

"Ohh, call me Jim," the man insisted, as though granting a great favor, hands in the pockets of a very nice suit - probably designer, and several degrees too nice for a kidnapping. He also appeared far too happy for a man in a repurposed car park, but John supposed he did hold all the cards.

"Looks like we’re in for rather a show," Moriarty said delightedly, coming around to the matching chair next to John. John hoped - foolishly - that he'd trip on the cords and knock himself out, but no such luck. 

"Not much of one, really," John said. This guy was verging on manic, and he was already scary enough; taking him down a little couldn't be a bad thing at all. "Nothing's moving, so. Afraid there's nothing to see."

"That's good of you to say, John - can I call you John? I think I will. Good of you, but I know that Sherlock's returned home, you see. These aren't the only cameras I have access to, and the Baker Street CCTV ones are _so_ much more reliable." He looked back at the monitor.

"He's got some kind of creepy dissection on the kitchen table involving brain stems," John pointed out eagerly. "He could be in there for hours."

"The physical apparatus responsible for REM sleep is not _creepy_ ," Moriarty said, horrified, turning to look at him. Perhaps, John thought, 'creepy' was not a term he should have introduced. "It's all right," Moriarty continued, before John could panic. "I left him a note."

"A note?" John repeated, making an effort to keep his voice steady.

"He'll notice it before long. Look, he sees it already."

Sherlock had emerged from the direction of the kitchen, and was staring with increasing alarm at something out of the camera's range. Outside, John guessed.

"I'm certain even you will be able to find the cameras based on the angles," Moriarty said suddenly. It took John a moment to process this, but when he did he was too relieved that the madman intended for him to survive his ordeal and return to Baker Street to be insulted. "I can get back in if I need to, don't you worry."

"That's a load off my mind, thanks," John said. 

"Funny, too!" Moriarty exclaimed, turning back to the video screens. "Bit slow, isn't he?" he asked sympathetically. John was too absorbed by the look of horror on his friend's face to rise to that bait, but it was a rather low blow. 

"What is he _seeing_?" John asked.

"I put your name and the address on the windows in red spray paint. Well, not _me_ ," he added with a conspiratorial wink. "Attention-grabbing color, though. The message may have run over onto that hideous curtain, but I'm assured it's perfectly clear. Now we only have to wait and we'll have a visitor!" He bounced on the chair with glee like a five-year-old, and John managed to turn his head to stare at him. 

"This address? Here? He'll bring the police. His brother." John blurted, before he could stop himself.

"Jooohnny, John-John," Moriarty said, shaking his head sadly. "You really don't know him very well. Especially given that you're partners."

"He's not my partner," John snapped.

"Oh, do you prefer lovers? Boyfriends? The term is rather saccharine, isn't it?"

"We're not a couple," John insisted. Moriarty just cleared his throat and gave him a significant look. John sighed explosively. It wasn't worth trying to convince a madman, anyway. So there.

Sherlock disappeared from view in a whirl of wool; he hadn't even taken his coat off to examine the dissection in the kitchen. Moriarty checked his watch. 

"Well! I just need to make a few preparations. Wouldn't want our guest to doubt my hospitality." He jumped up, all manic energy, and strode for the door. "Won't be five minutes," he said, and vanished.

It was considerably more than five minutes. John spent the time trying every way he could think of to worm out of his bonds, but whoever had done them had clearly been a professional, as even with all his training, he couldn't manage it. He kept one eye on the screens, and one eye on the 'door' opening in the wall, but there was nothing moving on the screens and nothing moving beyond the door. Then Moriarty came back, and he stilled.

"Getting a bit of exercise?" Moriarty asked casually. He was carrying a telltale silver case, identical (as far as John could see) to the case Sherlock used. A PASIV device.

"Thought I'd put the time to use, yeah," John replied, as casually as he could. He was aware that his shirt was showing signs of his exertions, and that his wrists were not in a good way where they'd chafed against the ties holding them to the chair. He'd tried pulling the chair's flimsy-looking arms off, but they hadn't budged.

"That chair has a steel core; I wouldn't bother," Moriarty said, now putting the case down between their chairs and kneeling over it.

"You might have told me that before," John said mildly - much more mildly than he felt.

"I might have," Moriarty agreed, then paused in whatever he was doing and grinned at John. It was not, in any way, a sane grin. John shut up.

Sherlock suddenly reappeared on a different monitor, and John immediately forgot what was happening around him, all his attention focused instantly on the screen. Sherlock was striding down a hall, grey and unremarkable, and then into another shot on a different monitor. Someone stepped out of a side door to meet him, and he slowed. The newly-appeared man - a beefy, bald-headed guy with a scowl and several prominent scars - said something to him. Sherlock said something in reply. There was no sound, and John discovered he was terrible at reading lips. 

"What are they saying?" he asked Moriarty, desperately.

"Hmm," Moriarty said, looking him up and down as though trying to decide whether to tell him. "My friend there is explaining about forbidden electronics, weapons, explosives, that sort of thing. Dear Sherlock will get scanned a few times, there may be an EMP involved, you know." He waved a hand, sounding bored. "We're very concerned with security here. No one is allowed to have electronics or weapons. Well, nobody except me," he said, grinning again.

John could see movement in two of the monitors, and finally he understood that they were from two cameras in the same room: the one close on a chair, and the other on an unidentifiable lump of metal. He could see Sherlock staring around, then his long fingers came into view on the other monitor, and slowly lifted the lid of the metal object. There was a complex, disturbingly familiar tangle of electronics and cords inside. John could make out a vial of stamped, untampered (he'd believe that for certain when hell froze over, however) Somnacin from the Baskerville factory, a single coil of IV infusion line and a strange sort of antenna that he'd never seen in a PASIV before. He leaned forward as much as his bonds would allow. On closer inspection, he could see a yellow button just like the activation trigger on a PASIV with a note taped to it that said 'PRESS ME' with an altogether too perky smiley face. John finally turned, wide-eyed, and looked at Moriarty, who was watching the screen with nearly equal fervor.

"Transmitter," Moriarty said, his eyes positively shining with glee. "I came up with the idea myself. This larger model has a matching one, so we can share the dream without being hooked to the same device. So many opportunities for things to go wrong when one is in the same room. We'll be well-guarded, of course, just in case. Genius, isn't it?" 

John had to admit to himself that it sort of was, even if he didn't admit it aloud. Moriarty seemed to know what he was thinking, anyway. He watched dully as Moriarty inserted a lead first into his immobilized arm, then the black one into his own.

"So we're going to be dreaming, rather than meeting in the real world." Moriarty rolled his eyes at him, fiddling with tape.

"Yes, of course. I'm not an _idiot_."

"Right," John said, fighting the urge to apologize. "Am I going to be tied to a chair there, too?" he asked, only half-joking. 

"No, you'll be absolutely free," Moriarty said, gleeful once again. "Not a hindrance anywhere. You could take me out if you wanted, Mister Soldier. You really are just as cute as a button." He pinched John's cheek in the manner of elderly aunts and grandparents across the world. "Though that would rather defeat the purpose."

"And. Er." He wanted to ask what the purpose _was_ , but he was rather sure it was best not to press Moriarty at this point. There was something progressively more disturbing about him, though John couldn't put his finger on it. "Why won't I?" he asked instead.

"Sniper," he said, leaning forward as Sherlock finished his inspection of the box and was contemplating his own lead.

"Oh right. Well." He didn't mention that getting killed would wake him up. Maybe Moriarty had forgotten. But as though he'd spoken aloud, Moriarty turned slowly to look at him. 

"He's not aiming for your _head_ , silly. Pain is in the mind, isn't that right?"

John could feel his expression deteriorating. He tried to stop it, but with those eyes so close he really didn't believe it was possible to fool the man. The Spider. Wonderful. On the screen, Sherlock finally put in the lead, looking grim, and closed his eyes.

"It's showtime!" Moriarty cried, and pushed the button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much gratitude to my beta friend, who reassured me that this bit was okay. The next one is already giving me fits; I blame Jim.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moriarty is kind enough to deliver a warning. There are kidnapping, drugs, and gunshots involved, but who's counting?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's rather more bad language here than previously. Just a friendly warning. My dear. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

"It's never 'just a dream,' is it? A faceful of glass hurts like hell when you're in it… it feels real." -Cobb, _Inception_

\----------

The first thing John heard was the rhythmic sound of lapping water. It was soothing, quiet, with a faint echo. It was rather nice; under other circumstances he'd have found it relaxing. The rest of his surroundings came slowly into focus: a building housing only a pool - public from the looks of it - with toys and lesson implements poking out of boxes, a pile of life jackets, some small lockers. There were lights on, but no windows. Odd, he thought, and then he was aware of Moriarty stepping up beside him, and a tiny dot of red light on his bad knee, and of the creak of the far door as Sherlock stepped in.

"Welcome!" Moriarty yelled, manic once again. "So nice of you to join us, Sherlock. Just a few ground rules while you're finding your place, putting your game face on, getting familiar with it all. First, the consequences: John will be shot in the leg by my very efficient friend with the gun up there in the balcony - hello, friend!" 

There was silence from the balcony, and the red dot didn't waver. 

"Oops, I think I forgot to give him a personality," Moriarty continued, unmoved. "Or vocal cords. But you can bet your life that he won't miss, and he has lots and lots of bullets. So, Sherlock, _you_ will be shot in the back of the head. You'll wake up, too soon to interfere, of course. John will not wake. _You_ will not leave that place alive, and as for poor, wounded Johnny-boy here - well, I'm sure I'll think of something." 

John tried to communicate wordlessly to Sherlock that he would be fine, that he'd get out of… whatever Moriarty had in mind for him and Sherlock should really just take the opportunity to leave before something else unbelievable happened. The madman had already put antennas on PASIVs - no telling what else he'd concocted. But Sherlock either wasn't getting the message or was choosing to ignore him. Typical.

"And now, the rules," Moriarty continued. "No coming closer unless I say so. No harming either yourself or your pet here. No disagreeing with me. Clear?"

"The transmitter," Sherlock said, and John had a paranoid moment of wondering if Sherlock could hear him thinking. "Novel."

"Isn't it?" Moriarty replied, beaming. "No way to know where we really are, I'm afraid."

Sherlock got that little smirk he wore when he was sure he knew something that his audience didn't. (In this case, John was beginning to suspect, his audience hoped he'd work it out.) "Oh, I wouldn’t say _that_ ," he said.

"No? It's a very powerful transmitter."

"No," Sherlock agreed. "The transmitter is powerful, but has a limited range. Close by, then, and it has to be powerful to safely penetrate concrete. Can't be too many layers, though, or the signal wouldn't be clear. The antenna was up and slightly to the south-east; you're in the same building, one floor above me and in approximately in that direction. Simple." 

Moriarty's mouth was all but hanging open in delight. "Good!" he exclaimed, clapping his hands. "Oh, this could be so much fun." 

"Ah. Could be?" Sherlock asked mildly.

"Hmm. Could," Moriarty said. "I've invited you here, you see, to ask a special kind of favor." 

"A favor," Sherlock repeated. John could see that he was playing for time with this slow repetition, and wondered what he was up to. Somnacin wasn't going to keep him under for very long.

"Yes. The favor is this." The smile dropped off Moriarty's face like it had been erased, or had never even been there. John felt a chill just watching him. "Stop interfering," he said. "Back off. Or else."

"Or else what?" Sherlock asked, but John had a feeling that he knew already.

"Don't you know?" Moriarty asked gleefully. Really, John thought, the man was more mercurial than Sherlock. They were bloody perfect for each other, which was disgusting. He glowered silently.

"You'll kill me, I suppose." Sherlock sounded far more blasé about this than John thought was warranted.

Moriarty looked - not bored; _offended_. "Of course I'm going to kill you - someday. I don't want to rush it, though," he said, depressingly confident. "I don't need to. You're so depressingly obvious when it comes to matters of the heart. One tiny threat - not even a _threat_ , since I told you exactly where to find us - to this one and here you are. Really, Sherlock. It's awfully transparent."

Sherlock wavered - even John could see it, and he wasn't a genius. Of course, it was nice to think that Sherlock would be put out at having to find another flatmate who would put up with him; that couldn't be easy. But really.

"Why here?" Sherlock asked suddenly.

Moriarty only smiled; it was very nasty and not something that John would relish seeing again. "Oh, memories. But mostly I wanted to make certain you were aware that you don't get to make any calls here. This is my world, and it plays by my rules. I can do whatever I like here, and I can do whatever I like up above, and whatever I like to you, and you're getting in my way."

He took a few steps forward - into the pool, or rather onto it, as his expensive-looking shoes barely broke the surface. 

"Oh, please," Sherlock scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Religious imagery? From you?"

"It doesn't have to be," Moriarty said, smirking as he stepped back onto the tiles at the pool's edge. "But crossing me is not in your best interest, Sherlock."

But Sherlock was no longer looking at Moriarty; he was looking at the lockers next to him. John frowned and glanced over. They weren't particularly well-cared for, and some hung open. Clothes were revealed, shoes, gym bags, the detritus of a public pool in use by kids and visitors, swim teams and locals - people who thought their stuff was safe enough. Sherlock stepped over and pulled out someone's -- John couldn't be certain, but it looked like sheet music. 

"Bach," he said shortly, looking at it eagerly. "One of the Variations. I know every note."

"Yes, so do I," Moriarty said. "Boring! Don't disturb the props, my dear." 

Sherlock looked up from the page and there was a gleam of triumph in his eyes. "Nothing is here unless you put it here, and if you put something unimportant here, then clearly it's important."

Moriarty stepped forward. He was beyond where John was standing so he couldn't read his expression, though from the sound of things, his eyes were narrowed.

"I suspect we need to get your attention," Moriarty said silkily, and a gunshot rang out, impossibly loud in the echoing enclosure of the pool, making John jump. He looked down at his leg in a panic, but apparently that was a warning shot. He'd believed Moriarty when he'd said his gunman wouldn't miss, and swallowed with some effort. Sherlock didn't even look up.

"Remember what I told you, Sherlock," Moriarty said, and his voice was deceptively soft.

Sherlock looked up at last. "There's a code in these notes," he said.

"Mm," Moriarty said, and turned so that he could glance at John, then at the music, and tutted as though making a decision. "Too bad you won’t have a chance to decipher it."

Without warning he opened his mouth wide, inserted the barrel of a pistol and pulled the trigger. There was another loud bang, and Moriarty vanished like a magician showing off his final trick. 

John stared dumbly at the spot where he'd vanished before registering footsteps racing toward him. He ran for Sherlock as the building began to collapse. Chunks of concrete began splashing into the not-solid-after-all pool.

"John. Where are you?" Sherlock yelled over the sound of cracking concrete. 

"Here," John said before he could really process the question, and there in a collapsing building, with dust and bits of concrete and iron raining down, showers of sparks and the ground cracking apart underneath them, Sherlock rolled his eyes at him. It was utterly surreal and utterly ordinary, and John found himself laughing uncontrollably.

"Awake, John. Where are you, awake?" Sherlock said, with infinite patience. A giant block fell into the water with a huge splash. John made a heroic effort to avoid putting his arms around Sherlock, but focusing was very difficult. He got the laughter under control, but it didn't help.

"The floor above you, as far as I know," John managed. Sherlock was wearing his favorite velvet suit - _suit_. He thought it was the same suit Sherlock was wearing on the CCTV screen. Figured that he would wear fucking velvet to meet a madman.

"It looks like the same building. I can see you on one of the monitors, so I know your surroundings. Oh - there are monitors in the room with me, stacked up, long cords going out around a corner. Follow the cords."

He had to raise his voice to be heard over the groaning of metal. Their conversation was growing more hurried moment by moment, and Sherlock suddenly threw his arms around John's waist. John only had time to register approval of this plan before he was being flung into the pool alongside his friend. 

He came up sputtering as an unidentifiable mass of metal and concrete landed on the spot they had been standing moments before, making a huge mess of what was left of the tiled walkway around the pool. 

"What else?" Sherlock was streaming water; no suit had been sacrificed in a nobler cause, John thought. He tried to focus. The roof of the place was _undulating_. John had a moment to think that no roof should do that; it was positively obscene. 

"It's fairly large, about twenty meters by ten - it's just yellowish concrete, I don't know," he said helplessly.

"What else, John? I'll come and find you." Sherlock was eyeing the ceiling, too, when the whole thing collapsed inward and tons of building came hurtling toward them.

"Oh - I can hear water dripping, far off on the right, about two o'clo--"

And John was abruptly awake, and alone. He was still in the chair where he'd woken before, but the matching one beside him was empty. The PASIV was gone as well, and the numerous screens, still piled up before him, were all blank, all switched off. He struggled a bit in his bonds, but they were as secure as ever.

"Hello?" he called, but other than a faint echo he couldn't hear anything except that damned dripping. It was probably too far off and too soft for Sherlock to pinpoint, and he made another go at escaping his bonds. The chair wasn't bolted to the ground, so perhaps he could inch it toward the opening in the wall, see if he could work out what was around him. It was certainly better than sitting here doing nothing. He jerked his body so that the chair moved a very little across the dirty floor, making quite a racket. He did it again. Another few centimeters. He was about to do it again when his head jerked up.

He could hear voices, though not clearly enough to make out words. One did sound like Sherlock's, the other decidedly not. 

Hello?" he said more cautiously. The voices came closer. 

"In there," the not-Sherlock voice said, not bothering to keep quiet, and Sherlock appeared around the corner at a rather quick pace. 

"Are you all right?" he said, a little too loudly. He slowed when John nodded, and then behind Sherlock came the most beautiful woman John had ever seen. She was wearing a sequined silver gown and long gloves, and looked like she was ready for a night at the opera. 

"Ah John," Sherlock said, as calmly now as though it were their living room and John had appeared from the kitchen. "May I present Irene Adler."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Bach motif code is a real thing. I'm sure someone better versed in musical theory than me has dissected this Reichenbach theory better than I ever could - I can hear my cello laughing at me. Johann Sebastian would be appalled. But it's… interesting. All credit goes to my beta for pointing this field of cryptography out to me, and all mistakes to my shoddy internet research. Interestingly, OTP = One-Time Pad in cryptography. That's certainly not what it means in my head.
> 
> I took a few liberties with the pool geography; it does have windows (not prominent ones, thank goodness) and I moved the lockers from the back. But otherwise, I think you've seen it. We could blame Jim's memory for the errors, but on second thought, that's not very likely. Just blame me for making things up. It isn't blown up (or anything) and Sherlock doesn't take the velvet suit for a swim in canon, either. More's the pity. This is my made-up universe though, and honey, you should see me in a crown! 
> 
> Thanks as always to my beta, and I'm very sorry I didn't have Jim say 'fuck off' like she wanted.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and Irene bicker (what else is new) and are generally unhelpful, but it turns out Irene has information she's willing to part with. For a price, of course.

"I'm not dead. Let's have dinner." -Irene, ASiB

\----------

The three of them piled awkwardly into a cab for the ride back to Baker Street. John was in the jump-seat before realizing that actually, he was the only awkward one out of the three. The other two looked perfectly at ease.

"So, uh," John said. This silence was not the full and immediate explanation he'd been expecting when Sherlock and a beautiful woman came to rescue him, tied up in a parking garage, from an unhinged and vanished madman with a modified PASIV. Really, what the hell. He hoped his expression would demand the answers he sought. They both only looked at him, so apparently not. John looked stubbornly back. 

"We used to work together," Irene said flatly. John gaped at her.

"We worked together _once_ ," Sherlock corrected. "Twice if you count that terrorist thing. But I don't; I was barely involved."

"Once," Irene repeated graciously. 

"Okay," John said slowly, trying not to let his vague irritation at this new information show on his face. "Tell me about it?"

Irene grinned and eagerly started to speak, but Sherlock cut her off. "I'd rather not," he said.

"That's because I was better than you," Irene said, matter-of-fact.

"That is a matter of opinion," Sherlock said, and continued quickly, "Irene is a very good thief, when a thief is required for a job, John. I've learned not to trust her; however, that is not a reflection on her talent."

"You know just how to flatter a girl," Irene said, her voice melting with sarcasm.

"You said you never work with anyone unless they are excellent," John pointed out, glad to be able to contribute to the conversation. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him, and Irene preened.

"Well, I _am_ excellent at what I do," she said, glancing coquettishly at Sherlock. That was quite enough, John decided, and leaned forward in his tiny seat.

"Just… take me through it. What happened after you woke up?" 

Sherlock still looked annoyed, but complied. "The device with the transmitter was gone, and the odd taste in my mouth suggested a light tranquilizer had been used. That explains why I stayed under, and incidentally suggests that Moriarty, or at least his henchman, is something of a coward."

"Wouldn't let him hear you say that," John joked, but no one laughed.

"I went in approximately the direction I'd mentioned, up a staircase when I found one, but there was no sound of dripping and I saw no cords. The dust on the floor had been disturbed by too many feet to get a clear track, so I was going to try to work out a layout of the whole place and find a room of approximately the size you had described. I turned a corner unforgivably quickly and found Irene stepping past an unconscious guard."

"I was busy double-crossing my boss," Irene said, as though she was commenting on the weather. "And you were running. You sounded like a stampeding herd."

"Of course, I recognized her," Sherlock continued smoothly, "and enlisted her help to find the room you'd described." 

"Bribed," Irene put in. "But I wasn't especially loyal to that arse Moriarty, so it was less than my usual fee."

"She knew exactly where you were."

"Because I’d just been there." 

Sherlock looked at her; clearly, this was new information to him, as well. 

She huffed, as though Sherlock had been keeping information from _her_. "I was taking his totem while he was asleep. You never know when something like that could be useful."

"There were guards," Sherlock pointed out. 

"Yes, and they all knew me. Very well, if you take my meaning," she said, smirking. John had seen that smirk before and did not approve of it being on her face. Sherlock only looked appalled, and Irene scoffed.

"Not that way; I do have _some_ standards. But they were familiar with me slipping around, and you saw how I dealt with those that raised an objection."

"Tranquilizer?" His eyebrows rose.

"Sedative. It's more _me_ ," she corrected.

The taxi slowed to a halt outside 221B, and to John's vague disappointment, though he hadn't really expected otherwise, Irene got out as well. He supposed his sense of chivalry wouldn't have allowed an alternative, but he wasn't entirely comfortable with the situation. John was left to pay the driver while Sherlock unlocked the door, but at least he was used to that. He found his wallet untouched, and followed the two of them inside. 

"You don't trust her on a job, but you trust her in our flat?" he whispered, pulling Sherlock back as he bounded up the stairs after Irene.

"Please, John," Sherlock replied, rolling his eyes again. "She manipulates people for her own gain, and it isn't as though there's anything of value in our flat."

"Nothing of _yours _, maybe," John muttered, but Sherlock ignored this. He resolved to sleep with his pistol under his pillow anyway, and followed Sherlock into the flat. Disturbingly, Sherlock was following Irene straight in, and she didn't have a key. John pretended not to notice this.__

"Why were you double-crossing Moriarty if you were working for him?" he asked, glancing around at the usual disaster as he entered. 

"I wanted him to be on my side," Irene said, surprisingly candid. John wondered if she was lying. "And then I didn't. You never know when something like a totem will come in handy, and it was an easy pinch while you were both asleep. You looked so peaceful," she said, tilting her head at him, "but that ridiculous box with the antenna always gave me terrible nightmares."

"Yeah, come to think of it, it wasn't exactly a happy dream." John could feel his face blanking and moved automatically toward the kettle. "So you have some experience with the antenna box. You use a totem, then?"

"Of course," Irene said, and looked expectantly in his direction. 

"You, er. Don't take it out much for show, I guess." He filled the kettle, and she just smirked at him.

"Oh, I could, I suppose," she said at last, "but to what purpose? I know when it's in my hand. That is, after all, the point of a totem."

John pursed his lips and said nothing, turning to Sherlock. "What was coded into those notes, anyway?"

"Locations. Names. People in his network," Sherlock said, throwing himself into his chair with all the drama he could muster. "It was simple to work out once I found the sheets in that locker. The notes in the accompaniment were all over the place, and the repetition was jarring, even if it had been made for a music student. And the time signature, with that beat, ridiculous."

"I'll bet," John said, pulling down mugs while the water heated. "It's like he wasn't even trying." He expected the sarcasm to be lost on Sherlock, but he did get a look of exasperation for his trouble.

"What sort of totem does Moriarty use?" Sherlock asked abruptly. 

Irene considered him. "Not sure I should tell you."

"Oh, dull. I'll pay you, how about that? A favor."

"So you'll be on my side, too!" she exclaimed. "Exactly when I want you to be."

"If you like," Sherlock said, sounding bored. "You know my restrictions."

"The people you won't cross. All right, it's a deal. Here you go," she said, and tossed him a coin.

Sherlock examined it as John emerged from the kitchen, having poured the water and become curious.

"A _pound coin_? Not exactly unique," he said, and Sherlock tossed it to him. 

"It's weighted," Irene explained. "Always lands heads-up. It seems he was a cheater from a tender age."

John tossed the coin from hand to hand - it did have a bit of a strange weight to it, but if it hadn't been pointed out, he might not have noticed. He tossed it back to Sherlock, who once more focused his laser-sharp eyes on it. 

"You replaced it with another coin, of course?" Sherlock asked.

"Of course," she agreed, "but your friend Moriarty is not going to be fooled for long, if at all."

"I've seen it," Sherlock said abruptly. "Give it back. Slip it into his pocket or wherever he keeps the thing."

"I can probably arrange that. I have some friends at the Ministry of Justice."

"The _what_?" John asked. 

"Oh, you heard me," Irene said, coy again. "They're on my side. Exactly when I want them to be. Useful, isn't it?"

John stared, then resolutely turned went to finish making the tea. "Sugar?" he asked over his shoulder.

"No, thank you," Irene called politely, and John just caught the flash of the coin being tossed back to her. "I think I'll drink it after I have a quick shower. Should I just take the couch?"

It was obviously a leading question, and Irene clearly had no intention of sleeping on the couch. 

"Just sleep in my bed," Sherlock said, before John could speak. "I'm not using it tonight." He steepled his fingers in his thinking pose, and with that gesture he may as well have closed a door between himself and the rest of the world. 

"Good night, then," Irene said, and breezed off. She snagged her teacup on the way, and closed Sherlock's door behind her, effectively sealing herself off - for now, at least. John stared at the door for a moment to be sure she wasn't about to pop out again, then steeled himself for an unpleasant task. He turned to Sherlock. 

"You're thinking of doing something stupid, aren't you?"

Sherlock deigned to look at him. "Nothing I do is without purpose, John."

"That wasn't what I asked, and you know it." Sherlock continued to stare; John knew he was working out exactly what he wanted to know, which was lucky as John wasn't sure himself. 

"I have no intention of trying to run after Moriarty alone. He has already caused enough trouble of a criminal nature to be in even Lestrade's radar. Also, he threatened both of us tonight, and I don't believe he would stop at intimidation in any aspect of his work."

"Well. That's good, then," John stammered. He hadn't expected Sherlock to be so reasonable.

"However, the remote PASIV has proven interesting. As well as the fact that he used code rather than locking the information away. And I should look into that location; based on his conversation, I believe it is - or was - a place in the waking world."

"And there was a kidnapping and guns," John put in, and Sherlock made a dismissive noise: _unimportant_. John glared, but he knew it was largely useless. Sherlock seemed to take pity on him and lowered his hands.

"I'm interested in how to stop him, John, and that is not helpful information." 

"Okay, information. Fine, as long as it doesn't involve haring off after this lunatic and trying to bring him down with a handgun or something. Fine."

"It doesn't involve my 'haring off' after him, no." Sherlock steepled his hands together again and stared off into space. "I don't need to; he'll come to me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my friend the beta.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Irene vanishes, and Sherlock formulates A Plan. At least, one hopes he has a plan. Moriarty pays a visit to 221B, and gets the nice china! :O

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many quotes in this part are taken from Moriarty's hack of John's blog on 16 March. It is hilarious if you haven't seen it. Jim Moriarty, decorating critic. XD

Ariadne: Who'd want to be stuck in a dream for ten years?   
Yusef: *shrugs* Depends on the dream. - Inception

\----------

Irene was gone when John came down the next morning. She'd not come through the living room to go out the front door like a normal person or Sherlock would have seen her, and the room's only window was locked from the inside. Sherlock just rolled his eyes like he couldn't be bothered with this trivia, but John knew he was annoyed that she'd managed to escape his notice when leaving.

"We have much more important things to be focusing on," he said. John raised his brows at him.

"It's just a parlor trick," Sherlock said. "She does love to be dramatic."

"Thank god you're above all that," John said, eyeing the swirly dressing gown over his bespoke suit pointedly. Sherlock raised his eyebrows right back and turned toward the music stand again where he had been composing.

They really did have more important things to be focusing on. Sherlock clearly had no intention of backing off, or whatever Moriarty had instructed them to do, and appeared to be just as reckless as ever. He jumped on whatever case Lestrade funneled their way, whether it was one of Moriarty's or not. Many of these, though - even some minor crimes that Lestrade hadn't suspected had any relevance - had turned out to be connected to Moriarty's web. John didn't see any retaliation for weeks, though he was on the alert for it, and the constant tension was beginning to take its toll. When Mycroft told him that they were nearly surrounded by assassin neighbors, John was almost relieved.

He shared this information with Sherlock, who hadn't received so much as a text on the matter from his brother, and didn't seem at all concerned once John had told him.

"Taking care of it," was all Sherlock said.

"Great. You want to tell me how you're 'taking care of' the fact that there are trained killers living footsteps away?"

Sherlock only peered into his microscope again. The slide had a bit of brain on it, this time from a chimpanzee, and John didn't want to get too close. Fortunately, Sherlock's phone beeped with a text - fortunate because Sherlock certainly wasn't going to get up, so John went to fetch it. It said:

I have a proposition for you.   
Talk soon.  
 Jim Moriarty x.

He scowled at the phone. "From Moriarty," he called, and Sherlock immediately sat back from the microscope and held out an imperious hand. John considered not handing it over, though he supposed that would be rather childish. There had been several mysterious texts from the man that John had seen, and John's ire over Sherlock's correspondence with a madman was almost equaled by his desire for Moriarty to stop signing off every missive with a kiss. It was... annoying.

\--

It was a matter of hours later, though technically it was the next morning, when Sherlock announced that they were going to have a visitor.

"Another case from Lestrade?" John asked. He was barefoot and carrying the newspaper, and had been hoping to look through it and have some tea in peace. Maybe Lestrade wouldn't mind if John didn't put on shoes in the house for his visit.

"Not exactly," Sherlock said, and smiled that secretive smile that generally meant he'd done something dangerously stupid. "Jim Moriarty."

"He's coming _over? Here?_ To our _flat_?”

He almost asked incredulously if Sherlock had given him their address, but that was even more ridiculous.

"We made a deal. No arrests, no guns, no kidnappings, no drugs other than sleep medicine. And not lethal doses. He's bringing a PASIV and we'll settle this like civilized people."

"Civilized," John repeated. He really could not believe that Sherlock Holmes, the smartest man he knew, was being so thick. "You do realize that a PASIV is practically a license to do whatever the hell he wants, as long as he doesn't kill you." Sherlock only picked up his violin.

"We do get something out of it, John. Something very valuable."

"That's great - what new joys can we possibly expect from Jim Moriarty," John asked, without much enthusiasm. "Bombings? Kidnapping? Poison?"

"Freedom." Sherlock turned and John saw a smile trying to fight its way out. "He won't threaten either of us; no more kidnappings, no more hired assassins down the street. We can get on with our lives, John, if we just do this one thing. Several people know about it; it's not like he can keep us under forever. _Freedom._ It’s the first step to stopping him altogether. It's what we want."

Listening to him talk about it, John could almost believe it was true. Though a nagging doubt told him Sherlock wouldn't think this was such a great deal if it was only himself that was being targeted. He knew that mentioning this would only lead to an argument.

"We're just _trusting_ that he's not going to do anything underhanded?" John asked instead.

"And he's trusting that if he comes here, alone, with no backup, that I won't have Lestrade and half the MET here to arrest him," Sherlock agreed.

"Sherlock, that's insane."

"Also that you won't shoot him while he's asleep."

"Well, I can't, because I'll be asleep, too." Sherlock only hummed and plucked a few random notes on the instrument. John narrowed his eyes at him and was pleasantly surprised by the steel in his voice.

"I'm coming. You can't stop me. I live here, too; I'm here all the time, and you can't even open that door without me knowing it. " John was aware that a note of panic was starting to grow in his voice, but that couldn't be helped. Sherlock would no doubt know it was there even if he wasted energy trying to hide it.

Sherlock looked at him assessingly, as though weighing the strength of his conviction.

"Hmm," he said, and John tried to look absolutely determined and immovable. He must have managed it, because Sherlock just nodded at him and turned away. "I'll put the kettle on," he said. John stared after him.

“ _You’re_ going to-- hang on, when exactly is this madman supposed to show up here?"

"About ten minutes. We can likely count on him to be punctual. We should get the good china, don't you think?"

"The _good_ \--"

"Oh, and John." Sherlock turned around very suddenly to stare at John, looking very seriously down his nose at him. John froze in place and completely forgot to splutter about getting the good china out for this maniac.

"Don't bring your totem. If you insist on coming along, I ask this one thing: don't bring it."

"What?" John asked, wide-eyed. "Why?"

"There's no need. Don't bring it. We'll be asleep, you'll know we're asleep, there's no need for it, don't bring it."

Any further protests from John were cut off by Sherlock turning around, flipping on the kettle, and beginning to set the tea tray. John considered mentioning that he already had the totem, that he had grabbed it when he was dressing that morning, and it was even now burning a guilty hole into his pocket. It was just a bashed-up bullet with a terrible backstory, really. He was debating the wisdom of this confession when there was the unmistakable sound of the front door opening, closing, and then soft footsteps on the stairs. John and Sherlock looked quickly at each other, John panicked, Sherlock practically vibrating with excitement.

"Quickly, John. The tea."

John wasn't quite sure what Sherlock was getting at. Telling John to move more quickly was not actually going to make the water boil any faster. John moved to the far cupboard and pulled down the box of loose-leaf tea he had bought on impulse and placed on a low shelf, confident of it being completely ignored (which it had been). This was apparently the right move, and John enjoyed approximately 10 seconds of silence (aside from the bubbling kettle), before the door was pushed open and Jim Moriarty sauntered in.

He was wearing a pale suit today and carrying a silver PASIV suitcase. He was immaculate as ever: perfect tie pin and perfect hair and perfect shoes. John hated him on sight, especially as he took in their main living room - _for living in_ , he wanted to shout - with a look that would sour milk.

"God, look at the wallpaper," he muttered, just loudly enough for John to hear. John ground his teeth together.

"Mr. Moriarty," he said, but that was as close to civility as he could get. Moriarty, however, didn't bother with formalities.

"Johnny-boy!" he cried. "Still here and all. Isn't that interesting."

"I... suppose," John said, lost, but Moriarty wasn't paying attention.

"Yes. Well. Not that interesting. But isn't this cozy," he said, staring around. "I see you've replaced the drapes. Interesting choice," he added with barely-concealed contempt. He put his silver box down and glided toward the window behind the rather messy desk. John was glad he'd closed his laptop.

"Yes," John said, dry as dust. "It doesn't have that abandoned car-park appeal, but we like it."

"Still funny," Moriarty confirmed, as though he was surprised and checking it off on a list. His gaze fell onto a Sudoku puzzle cube on the desk. "How the hours must fly by."

John had had just about enough of this and was on the verge of saying so, when Sherlock deigned to join them from the kitchen.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Moriarty," he said smoothly. There was just a hint of humor in his gaze that suggested a shared joke.

"Jim, please," Moriarty insisted, and as he turned, John couldn't help but see the malevolence lurking underneath the pleasant veneer. Slippery as a fish, this one.

Sherlock didn't really react to the comment (though John had the suspicion that they were going to be on a first-name basis from here on out), but nodded toward the chairs in a way that carried, from what John could see, an equal amount of malevolence. He tried not to let his reaction to this show on his face, but he couldn't help feeling relief that all three of them were aware the civility was only an act.

"Shall we?" Sherlock asked, picking up the PASIV as he crossed to them. He set it on the floor between the chairs and opened it.

"Standard model, just as we discussed," Moriarty assured him with a smile. John very much doubted this was true, but it at least _looked_ like it hadn't been tampered with.

"Indeed," Sherlock confirmed. John was pretty sure Sherlock didn't believe it, either.

"I'll just take the black lead," Moriarty said, plucking it out of the box and pulling out a little extra. John noted that there was not much extra - Moriarty was wise to the old 'additive to the infusion line' trick, then. John wished he had learned more tricks.

"Of course," Sherlock said, as though he'd expected this, and pulled out a lead for John and then one for himself. "Everyone comfortable?" he asked, handing the tape around. John and Moriarty nodded, though 'comfortable' was not the word John would have chosen.

"Excellent," he said. "Here we go, then." He shot a quick and inscrutable glance at John, then pushed the button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many quotes in this part are taken from Moriarty's hack of John's blog on 16 March. It is hilarious if you haven't seen it. Jim Moriarty, decorating critic. XD
> 
> Well, when I said I was going away for a few days, I didn't realize it would end in eye surgery that left me unable to look at a computer for very long for months. It comes and goes, so I have to be ready to write at all times.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone has plans except John, who is still reeling, but tries to help, anyway. Shootings, suicides, propositions, murders... in that order, actually. This chapter is based on the BBC Sherlock episode The Reichenbach Fall. It goes almost as well as that. :(

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably remind everyone that John is not a doctor in this AU - if so, he'd probably behave (and be treated) rather differently. And we can't have that.

"Can you do that, just for me?" -John, _TRF_

\----------

  
John opened his eyes, tense and prepared for just about anything, but saw that they were in exactly the same spot that they'd been in when they closed their eyes - down to the infusion leads, the machine between them, and the morning sunlight flooding into 221B through the windows.

"Are we asleep?" he asked stupidly, but Sherlock was frowning as well. John wished he could check his totem, but Sherlock would know immediately that John had ignored his request, so he refrained. 

"Of course," Moriarty said, removing his IV line. "This is as good a place to start as any, wouldn't you say? But if you don't believe me, you're welcome to check." He grinned at Sherlock. It wasn't a very nice grin. "Go ahead, spin your little spinner."

"I'll take your word for it," Sherlock said silkily. Sherlock's totem was a very nice antique gyroscope that his father had given him, hence Moriarty's 'spinner' comment, and he would say nothing else about it. John very much wanted to reach into his own pocket - he _didn't_ take Moriarty's word for it, as it happened - but there was nothing for it; Sherlock would see. John wondered why that fact bothered him so much.

Their not-quite-debate was cut off by a muffled bang from somewhere below them, followed by indistinct voices, shouting. And that sound - that was definitely a scream.

"My," said Moriarty, "your neighbors are having quite the row. Perhaps it's to do with Islamabad."

"More likely to do with your hired killers," John spat, pulling his own lead out and leaping to his feet, then turning back when he didn't hear Sherlock doing the same. Neither man had moved, and they were glaring at each other. 

"We're all going, or none of us is going," John said in a voice like iron. 

"By all means," Moriarty said, when Sherlock still refused to move - or indeed, to look away, until he did. They disentangled themselves from the PASIV sitting between them and trooped down toward the source of the yelling. John could hear sirens approaching, and increased his pace. 

They didn't have to go far. Speedy's Café was an absolute mess of confusion; the customers all had fled except for one guy who seemed to think it was his duty to stand there and scream. Two employees were yelling at each other, and Mr. Chatterjee was talking aloud to no one at all in what sounded like Urdu. 

"What is it, what happened?" John yelled, trying to be heard above the melee. The sirens were getting louder, and there was definitely more than one. Perhaps more than three.

Mr. Chatterjee just pointed silently toward the back room; John dashed in, no longer waiting for his silent flatmate and their odd visitor to follow. 

There was a horrifying red liquid splattered against the cans and boxes lining the shelves in the storeroom, and a couple of desperate-looking employees covered in what must be blood, crouched over--

"Mrs. Hudson. What happened?" John whispered, though the lady in question was unconscious. 

"Shot," one of the employees gasped, pressing down on the wound so hard her arms were shaking. "Bleeding won’t stop."

"Here," said the other, passing over another apron from a pile near his knee. The woman wadded it up and piled it on top of the others soaking red on John's landlady's chest. John stared in horror, before the second employee came to life and shouted at him to find something else made of cloth rather than just standing there. John jumped into action, finding a striped towel to add to the pile, but otherwise was absolutely useless. The paramedics arrived and shoved him out of the way, shouting incomprehensible figures to each other as they rolled in a gurney. 

John watched as Mrs. Hudson was loaded onto it and taken out to the waiting ambulance. He tried to remind himself that this was only a dream - if he trusted Moriarty, which he didn't - but he was in view of Sherlock and Moriarty after following the gurney outside, and couldn't check. He managed to get an answer to his frantic 'which hospital' question ("St. Bartholemew," was flung back at him) and flagged down a cab without consulting anyone, then held the door open as they all piled inside. 

No one spoke. It was the most awkward ride John could remember, and that was saying quite a bit. He gave the driver their destination - easy to find as they were only a few seconds behind the screaming ambulance - and then there was silence in the taxi. John was in the jump-seat again and was glaring straight at Moriarty, who looked utterly unconcerned.

At the hospital, John leaped out and raced inside, but was told that he'd have to wait until Mrs. Hudson was stabilized to see her. There were, of course, endless forms to complete and no one else to complete them, and it _probably_ didn't matter (if they were dreaming) but there was nothing else to do there. He started on them, skipping what he didn't know, but thought that it was a bit ridiculous to not know his landlady's first name and raised his head to ask Sherlock. He was gone, of course - and so was Moriarty.

"Oh God," John muttered, pulling out his phone. He was fairly certain that even now, Sherlock wouldn't answer a call unless it suited him - and when trying to keep up his untouchable façade in front of Moriarty it was certainly not going to suit him. John painstakingly typed out a text:

Where are you? -John

He decided against signing it with an x. Wouldn't want to make Moriarty jealous. Though the bastard certainly deserved it. John glowered at his phone before putting it back in his pocket.

On second thought, why not? He could damn well type an x if he wanted to. He pulled out his phone again to do just that when it beeped at him that he had a text: 

Rooftop. Don't follow. -SH

John dithered. It was surely no secret to either of them by now that Sherlock was incapable of staying out of harm's way, particularly when there was a challenge or puzzle to surmount, and it was no secret, either, that John's job was to pull him out of said harm. If John stopped him now, he'd only do it again. Anyhow, they were dreaming, right? No one had said he couldn't keep an eye on things. 

He abandoned the mostly-completed forms before him, and sprinted for the door.

Craning his neck outside, he realized that he could get a reasonably good view of the roof from the building across the street, and, entering through the back, he climbed level after level of yellow-tipped, concrete steps in a bland and featureless corridor. At each window he stopped and looked over to see if he could make out anything on Bart's roof. He saw the tops of Sherlock and Moriarty's heads, turned together as though in conversation, then at the next one Moriarty's face as he strolled around Sherlock, and at the next one, conversation again. Moriarty was pulling out his totem every so often when Sherlock wasn't looking, weighing it in his hand, then slipping it back into his pocket and lifting his head to talk again. Why on earth he was doing that, John had no idea. He wished for at least the fifth time that he could hear what they were saying, though from the secretive way Moriarty was doing it, he doubted that would help with this particular mystery.

He reached the top floor, as high as he could go without going onto the roof of the mystery building and giving himself away, and at last he could see the entire area of rooftop of the hospital across the street. Moriarty was checking his totem again, not bothering to hide it now because Sherlock wasn't looking. Sherlock was turned away. Sherlock was stepping onto the lip of the roof. John stared.

This-- this was ridiculous. This was not what they had planned. If they had made a plan; John wasn't entirely sure that they had. He vaguely remembered Sherlock crowing about freedom, and that had sounded like enough, at the time. But even dreaming, he was less certain now. 

Moriarty was talking again and pulling his totem out, flipping it into the air and catching it with delight, right behind Sherlock. Now Sherlock was talking. John finally dug into his pocket for his own totem.

_We'll be asleep, you'll know we're asleep, there's no need for it, don't bring it,_ Sherlock had said. Well, he had brought it, and there was no help for it, and he just wanted to be sure, and why was a smooth bullet casing sticking in his pocket? One more tug, and it came out into the light at last.

The bullet was smashed, compressed exactly as John remembered it, and every single groove and pit and dent between destroyed bits of metal was _exactly_ right. John stared at it. That meant--

"Sherlock!" he shouted out the open window, as loudly as he could. "We're not dreaming! Sherlock, we're not dreaming, _we're not dreaming!_ "

Sherlock looked right at him - _right at him_ ; John could feel it like a slap in the face. Then Sherlock jumped.

"Sher--" John started, and then he whirled and his feet were pounding down the endless stairs. He wasn't entirely certain how he got there; he wasn't at all looking at where he was going and was nearly run over by a bicycle. By the time he arrived, a small crowd had gathered around the b-- around Sherlock. 

John wasn't sure what he said when he could see a bit. Variations on 'No,' he thought, but the crowd held him back. There was more blood than he was expecting. Sherlock's curls were wet with it. There were so many people - where did all these people come from - but John managed to fight his way weakly through them. He grabbed an arm, and almost immediately wished he hadn't. Even John knew that his inability to find a pulse wasn't - wasn't promising, and Sherlock's head must be broken open somewhere, to bleed like that, and his eyes -- 

They looked, well. They looked dead. John felt like he'd been punched in the gut, and his stomach had conveniently removed itself. Sherlock was so _still_ , and he was never still. 

The paramedics wheeled him away in their endlessly efficient manner, unmoved. John didn't have a lot of hope that they could help. He stumbled back from the scene, ill at the thought of others trying (and failing, his mind helpfully supplied, always failing) to revive his friend. He should go inside. He would, in just a moment. He stared blankly at the abandoned puddle of blood. A few drops of rain pattered into it, but he ignored them.

Moriarty chose that moment to bound into sight, grinning. John wearily turned toward him.

"Gotcha!" Moriarty sang, mockingly. "Didn’t expect that one, did you?" He grinned. When John didn't respond, his expression turned into a horrifying exaggeration of sympathy.

"Oh come now, you knew I'd win in the end. Even you must have guessed there was no Somnacin in those vials. Here, look on the bright side: now that _he's_ gone, there'll be no need to come after you! You can go right back to your boring, ordinary life. Isn't that reassuring?"

John thought dully (though there would have no doubt been more of a jolt, if he'd had any jolts left in him) that this was likely exactly what Sherlock had intended. The thought made him want to throw up. 

"You might miss me, though," Moriarty continued. "I understand. I'm nearly irresistible. And absolutely _filthy_ rich. It might be difficult at first, accommodating my little quirks, but you've had practice, haven't you?" He turned to look disdainfully at the puddle of blood gathering in cracks in the pavement, nearly at their feet, and toed at it, making a face. John hated him suddenly, like he'd hated few other things in his life. This man… spider… _thing_ was nothing at all like Sherlock, and had no right to look at a part of him like he was looking at garbage. The rain grew to a light drizzle but John didn't notice; his hand was creeping of its own volition toward his rear waistband, where he'd taken to shoving his highly illegal service pistol.

"I'm filthy in other ways," Moriarty said, like it was an advertisement, and looked with derision toward the roof of the hospital. "Don't worry. Next date won't be like this."

John's heart might have been a shriveled husk at this point, but he was absolutely certain that this concept of a _date_ was the most repulsive thing he'd ever heard. He brought the gun up and pointed it at Moriarty; his hands were normally steady under stress, but here they were shaking so hard he wasn't sure he could find the trigger. 

Moriarty smirked at him. "Johnny-boy, you won't shoot me," he said, voice all warmth and jollity.

"I think, Mr. Moriarty, you'll find that you are wrong," John said steadily, and pulled the trigger. 

There was a bang, and then there was a body, and John lowered the gun and stood in the rain. He was waiting for the sirens of police cars to take him away and lock him up forever, and the rattle of the gurney as yet another body was rushed inside. John wasn't concerned; he had been close enough and fired that gun enough to be certain of a kill shot. He listened. Instead of sirens or gurney rattling or even passers-by screaming _he's got a gun_ , he heard music:

_I ran to the devil, he was waitin'_  
 _Ran to the devil, he was waitin'_  
 _All on that day_  
 _I cried -_

John hardly even dared to hope that he was hearing what he thought he was hearing. But the more he strained to hear the song, the louder it echoed in his head, and now that his mind was even a little clear of the symphony of grief and fury, he realized that he had no idea where he'd picked up that gun before pulling it out of his waistband.

John was gasping - he could hear it even if he couldn't feel it - and it dimly occurred to him that he was hyperventilating his relief; there wasn't enough air despite being outside. He dropped the gun with a clatter and felt his knees give out at last, landing him squarely in the puddle of Sherlock's blood. John put numb hands to his head, felt wetness on his face, and waited to wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. I need to find something involving ponies and kittens now. I don't actually care if it seems everything is ok at the end - that was wrenching. 
> 
> I do know there is not an ER at Bart's, but if the show can ignore that, so can I! My copious gratitude goes to my poor beta, who was nearly driven around the bend by this one - I lost track of the number of consultations and questions and rewrites. I nearly went around the bend myself, trying to remember who knew what and thought what and why and how that worked with the rest of it and what was really going on and how things went a bit wrong. Sadly, I am not a 'proper genius' and miss things, so errors remain mine!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NO IT'S NOT. IT'S NOT OKAY. That pretty much sums it up. John wakes and discovers both a problem and an ally. He gets answers to only some of his questions. And everything, of course, is not okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, the quote starting this chapter is not from either of the canons. But I like this quote. It really is appropriate. Just ignore where it comes from.

"Once her reality becomes yours, there's really no way back." - The Tracker, _What Dreams May Come_

\----------

John closed his eyes on a nightmare of bodies and blood; his best friend dead, his landlady (and friend) shot, kneeling in a puddle of blood and rain by another body and waiting to go to prison for avenging them. He opened his eyes at 221B with light streaming in through the windows, in a chair he himself had pulled hurriedly from the desk, headphones on and Mrs. Hudson hovering worriedly over him. He blinked up at her, then looked, panicked, toward the other chairs. Moriarty and Sherlock sat in them, both disconnected from the silent PASIV and both obviously asleep, breathing shallowly.

"Oh, thank heaven you're awake," Mrs. Hudson began, but that was all she could get out before John was heaving great, gasping breaths and stumbling out of his chair and toward Sherlock's. He probably made a sound, but he couldn't hear it. He buried his face in Sherlock's shoulder, relishing the warmth radiating off him, listening to his breath and heartbeat like they were the greatest symphony ever composed by man, one performance only.

"God," he managed, dimly aware that he was on his knees, and that here in the waking world his face was still wet. He didn't care at all.

"Oh," came Mrs. Hudson's soft voice from behind him. "He did find a good one in you." John lifted his head; Sherlock's breathing remained even, impassive. He slowly came to the realization that he was clutching at - perving on - his sleeping flatmate in front of his landlady, and that they weren't dreaming, this time. At least, he was pretty sure. He pulled his hands away with difficulty; they had clenched into fists in Sherlock's shirt. It was a time-consuming process.

"I thought he was dead," he confessed. "In the dream. Which - how the hell did he do that?"

She looked more worried, if such was possible. "He died in the dream?" She looked from John to his sleeping friend. "Oh dear," she said eventually. "He went down rather than up. They both did."

"Mrs. Hudson. What happened?"

She was becoming agitated, wringing her hands. "I knew one day it would be too much. He said it was what he needed."

John crossed to her at last, looked at her clasped hands, her worried face, her familiar, worn housecoat. He pulled her into an embrace and felt her stiffen in surprise.

"I'm so glad you're not shot," he said.

After a moment, he heard her gentle laughter and felt several affectionate pats on his back.

"So am I," she admitted. "But we'll have to work out what to do sooner rather than later. If he died and didn't wake, I suspect they've both ended up in a sort of dream-holding-place--"

"Limbo," John supplied, and she nodded.

"That's one name for it, yes."

He pulled away and looked toward the sleepers - Sherlock in particular. "Can you just start at the beginning?" he asked.

"There isn't much to tell," she admitted. "Sherlock came down a couple of days ago and asked me to make something strong enough to send one dreamer to… to Limbo, as you call it, when he died in the dream. And a dose of the sort of thing that Sherlock used to use. With a little extra, because he wasn't sure-- he wanted to-- Oh, John," she said, and there was a tremulous note in her voice.

”He asked for it; not your fault," he said quickly, but she clearly didn't believe him. He tried a subject change to distract her. "So he intended for Moriarty to end up there. Maybe he switched the boxes somehow. But that still doesn't explain--"

"I only know what I made," she said, looking down now, despondent. There was a distinct shortage of empty chairs in the flat; John led her to the couch and sat on the coffee table, facing her.

"How about the third vial?" he asked, but she shook her head.

"There wasn't a third; he only asked for two mixtures. If those were for him and your guest, you must have just had the usual. Somnacin."

"That bastard," John said, glaring at the man he'd been clutching not three minutes before. "He thought I'd wake up first."

"No doubt," she said, looking only at him. "And so you have."

It was a long moment before he replied. "I didn't mean to wake up without him."

"I don't think he expected you to stay under as long as you did. Tell me what happened down there?"

Haltingly, John explained what happened after they arrived at the hospital. He didn't explain what they were doing there, but he suspected that Mrs. Hudson knew anyway.

"I see," she said. "Well, I can't say I'm sorry that _he_ is still sleeping - Moriarty, I mean - but Sherlock meant to wake up. At least, that was what I intended when I created the compound, though I suppose I knew this was possible." She looked at her knees, and John took her hand.

"You did exactly what he asked. I wouldn't even have known - thought - we weren't dreaming, if not for the totem. And then we _were_. I still don't know how he managed that, by the way."

"He died on purpose, in front of you… I doubt you were meant to see that and think that it was reality, John."

John snorted. "He meant most of it. If he went to Limbo, he knew that I'd go after him." He peered at her. "He knows that, right?"

Mrs Hudson sighed. "I don't think he does."

"Then he's an idiot," John said firmly. "I suppose - he did tell me not to bring my totem. Maybe he was trying to do me a favor." He shifted a little at this thought. "I'll ask him. When I get there."

"John," she said in a way that meant John was not going to like what followed. "I'm not certain that sending you there as well is a good idea. You know how it can distort your perceptions. You know that _he’s_ down there, too. Moriarty."

"You think we won't make it out," John said.

"Oh, it's very easy to get out of Limbo. The hard part is remembering you need to get out. And as you've seen, totems can be unreliable."

"I'll remember. I'll make it my mission: kill Sherlock."

"And yourself, of course. If he wakes up without you he'll just go back in. That boy can be so stubborn when he sets his mind on something."

"Yes, I can believe it," John said wryly. "Can you make something to send me straight there?"

She pulled a stoppered glass of suspiciously brownish liquid out of her pocket. "One thing I've discovered, John, is that you are quite stubborn as well, when you set your mind on something."

He grinned rather frighteningly, and started to get up.

"One moment, John," she said. "Before you do this, you should know - I'm not going to abandon the two of you down there forever."

John frowned. "But you're not able to wake us up. Unless--" He turned his gaze back to Sherlock. "The three Ss, isn't that what you called it?"

"They don't work when the person is this deep," she said sadly, shaking her head. "No - if you're not back in fifteen minutes, I'll kill you both. You have my word."

"Fifteen minutes?" John repeated. "What if he's in disguise or something and I can't find him in time?"

"Fifteen minutes is years and years down there; you know that, John. I'm not going to just wait while your brains rot in Limbo. I'm sure that Sherlock, at least, would hate that. No, you can wake up from this; the drugs I made for him and the one I'll give you are all very short-acting. They will have worn off in seconds. You just need to remember to come back."

"I'll remember," John promised again.

"Please do," she said. "And not just for the sake of the flat, though don't think I'm forgetting the holes in the wall or the chemical burns, young man. Or the refrigerator. Or the bodies."

"Yes, I won't forget," John said hurriedly, standing and crossing back to his previous chair by the PASIV. "Fifteen minutes. Years down there. Kill Sherlock."

"And yourself," she reminded him, fitting the new drug in where the Somnacin had been and handing the lead back to him.

"And myself," he agreed. He waited until she had everything settled and then inserted the cannula. "Well," he said, suddenly awkward. 'Thanks for killing us' really didn't sound appropriate. "See you soon, I hope," he tried instead, and she nodded and smiled.

"I very, very much hope so," she said. "Don't forget." She pushed the button, and the room went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was not a terrible hybrid, but was still long enough to hold its own! So I got to make it its own section. I am still, sadly, reaping the horrors of not having a tight enough endgame. See, the film _Inception_ is one of my favorites, and also has plotholes big enough to drive a truck through. Sometimes it contradicts itself. This is both a blessing and a curse for this story, since a) there's lots of flexibility, but b) many questions about how this universe works are not definitively answered. A long discussion with my beta friend last night helped a lot, though - maybe I will be inspired. Please don't kill me in 15 minutes.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This Limbo is drawn from the minds of both Sherlock and Moriarty. In that light, it really isn't that weird.

"It's the chance to build cathedrals, entire cities, things that never existed, things that couldn't exist in the real world." -Cobb, Inception

————

John opened his eyes in Limbo, aware that there was something important he had to do. He was confident that he would remember what it was, eventually. But in the meantime, it didn't take a lot of processing to discover that he was extremely uncomfortable. Dirty, cold water was washing over the lower half of his body and he raised his head and looked around. He was lying on a riverbank, half-submerged, and beyond the river was London, kind of. Darker than he remembered, even for late at night, and dirtier - well actually, no, the dirty was about right. It dawned on him that his lower half was going numb, and he pulled himself forward until he could roll out of the water and, eventually, sit up.

He could see bridges on either side of him: Waterloo and Southwark, and a retaining wall on the shore, green with algae. Green with something, anyhow. He tried to focus on the positives rather than the fact that he was soaking wet and already chilly: at least he could recognize the landscape to an extent, even if he had no idea where to find Sherlock in this bizarre place. _Well_ , he thought as he clambered, shivering, to a standing position, _there is one place I can try._ He made his slow way to street level and then turned for Baker Street.

The landscape here was eerie; he could think of no other word for it. It was darker here than he had ever seen the city center. Nighttime had never bothered him, but here there was a persistent, swirling, foglike nastiness, yellow and foul, over all of it. Streetlights burned yellow rather than white, and what light they managed to emit was weak; it only traveled a few yards, creating huge patches of inky darkness between the semi-lit havens. Buildings that should have been polluting the night with light were not lit up at all, and there were far-off noises that had no place in London. Animal howls, grinding machinery, and things less identifiable. Bird calls? He hoped they were bird calls. He was not at all certain that they were.

John found himself dodging from one patch of darkness to the next. He didn't trust those too-welcoming circles of light, and didn't like the idea that he could be seen by unknown eyes when he didn't know this place at all. Limbo, he thought. It was called Limbo. He had to remember that. And he had to remember something else, but firstly that.

He didn't hear the telltale rumbling of the Underground, but that was not unexpected in a place so bizarrely unpopulated. Still, he'd have been glad of a lift; it was a long way to walk from the wrong side of the river to Baker Street. As if on cue, he heard the inviting thrum of a car engine a couple of streets over and getting louder. It was the _only_ car he'd heard, though, and John wasn't certain that he ought to jump out at it without knowing for certain that it - that _anything_ here - meant him no harm. Squinting toward the nearest intersection, it was only a few seconds before he saw the car passing: a black cab with its light on, glowing in friendly invitation.

Having recognized the universal bastion of Good that was the urban taxi, John waved at it, but the driver didn’t see him in the second or two before it passed through the intersection. Damn. Well, that was probably the equivalent of Oxford Street up ahead, and if he couldn't get a cab on the main road then he wasn't likely to get one at all. His limp was beginning to bother him again, anyhow.

Another taxi crossed the street he was hobbling up, but he was in a dark spot between two weak pools of streetlight, and his frantic waving again went unnoticed. He had his arm over his head and was about to shout when, mid-flail, he froze. He could almost swear that the figure behind the wheel of that taxi was the famous Mr. Moriarty.

John edged past the light when he could hear no more engines, just in time to flatten himself against the stone façade of a bank and see another taxi, going in the same direction, and driven by the same man. He paused, shaking his head. This had all gone a bit too Matrix, and even if this was Limbo, he shouldn't be seeing the impossible. Should he?

He reached the too-dark Oxford Street at last and turned toward home, again keeping to the shadows. The street was dark and silent, save for those far-off sounds and the occasional distant motor. The famous street looked more than abandoned; it looked used up, run down in a way that suggested no one cared about it any more. There was graffiti along several walls, much of it indecipherable, but there were a couple of places he could make out the letters IOU in the midst of sweeping shapes and incomprehensible symbols. Well, incomprehensible to him; Sherlock could probably work it out.

Another taxi rattled past and John squeezed himself into the tiny dark space between shopfronts just in time. This one was closer - too close, to be honest - and John could see clearly that Moriarty was the driver. He had on a little cap and looked far too pleased with himself as his car puttered by. John had never been more glad to miss catching a taxi driver's eye in his life.

Once the car had passed him, he continued up the street more cautiously, ducking into the shadows or even inside a store when he heard a car approaching. Baker Street didn't feel that far at all when the alternative was putting himself under the power of a deranged killer.

His eye was caught by an outdoor newsagent's, with the headline of the Evening Standard written large and locked into a plastic frame so that passers-by (of which there was exactly one) could read it from afar. 'HAIL TO THE KING,' it said. He slowed and finally stopped in front of the stand so that he could see the full front page of the actual newspaper. The date was missing, but under the headline was a picture in black-and-white of Moriarty in full royal regalia. John rolled his eyes and picked up a magazine instead. It was one of those full of attraction tips and quizzes to see if 'he' was cheating, but John was only interested in glaring at the front cover. Full color, of course, and featuring Moriarty as well: in a suit, peering smugly up at the camera, with those familiar black eyes glittering. This one was labeled 'MISTER SEX.'

Beneath the papers, he could see 'SUICIDE OF' peeking out, but didn't bother to move the papers in front to look. He knew what he would see, and he'd seen enough of that, thanks very much. He left the stand without choosing anything (not that there was a vendor), and continued on.

At long last, the welcome stone of Baker Street came into view. Even here in Limbo, he was surprised at just how glad he was to see the familiar door, the familiar pavement, the familiar numbers. The door was just a little ajar - enough for him to enter without his key and to be somewhat disturbed at the lapse of security.

"Sherlock?" he called as soon as he was inside, before remembering to keep his voice down. "Mrs. Hudson?" he tried, more quietly, but there was no response and he didn't investigate further before bounding up the stairs. The door to the flat was unlocked, but that wasn't unusual and he was inside before he had properly looked around.

The place was - not a mess, exactly (which was perhaps the most surprising thing), but it had the same unused, forgotten look that the rest of this London had. Most of the items he remembered were there, but it was as though much of the color had been leeched out of them. There were a couple of things missing: the skull decorating the mantle had vanished, and the kitchen was as clean as he had ever seen it. He ducked into Sherlock's room, knowing it would be empty, and then checked his own, just to be certain. Empty. He checked flats A and C as well, but found nothing unusual.

"Right," he muttered, at rather a loss. Not here, then. London was a big place. Where would Sherlock go? He discarded the idea of Bart's almost as soon as it occurred to him; Sherlock might visit Dr. Hooper fairly often, but she presumably wasn't there, and he imagined the place would hold bad memories. Scotland Yard? Perhaps, but it involved nearly retracing his steps. That might be all right, but he'd barely made it here. If he could know for certain that he'd find Sherlock there, certainly, but he couldn't.

What he needed, he decided, was to get out of this bizarre half-here place and think in the open. He left the flat and headed toward the park, following a path he often took in the waking world, though it wasn't nearly so silent there. Not so silent in terms of passing cars and other people, that is. There was a persistent noise here, sort of a scraping or dragging sound, that bore no resemblance at all to the noises he was used to hearing. It was a block or so away, but he'd rather be under the cover of the trees before working out what it was.

He had just entered the park and was relieved when he left the pavement that the soft dirt and grass under his feet muffled his footsteps. He was appreciating this fact, looking down, when he saw a gigantic pawprint in the dirt. It was shaped more or less like a dog's print, but it was so large that the beast had to be at least the size of a horse. But the scraping sound was getting closer, and John was feeling too exposed already. He skirted the edge of the park, away from the scraping sound, but now he could hear a low growl from within the trees, also getting closer. He considered his options: the scraping, the growling, or further retreat away from the park again. None of them were precisely _ideal_.

He chose the third option, of course, and backed away through the dark between streetlights. He could see, far off now, the source of the scraping: a gun, being dragged across the bricks and concrete walls of the city. The sound it made was much louder than it should have been. It was carried by a man of about Moriarty's size, imitating even his careless stride, but this man was in a black sweatshirt rather than Morarty's tailored suit. The man finally turned his face toward John, and even at this distance he could see that it was completely blank. There was no face at all.

John backed away farther, keeping his mouth tightly closed, but now that the faceless man had passed by and the scraping was softer, the low growl was louder and interrupted by angry snarls. This creature was getting closer, and it probably had sharper senses than sight. John retreated until his back hit brick, but couldn't see into the darkness of the park - across a street, now. The growling came closer, and there was the _click_ of a huge, clawed foot hitting the concrete between pools of light. John could only make out red eyes - quite a way off the ground; the thing had to be _huge_. More clicks as it prowled closer, now almost entirely snarling, and then John could see its ears laid flat to its head--

A hand grabbed his arm and he nearly screamed, then turned to the stranger and lost the ability to make any sound at all.

"This way," Sherlock said, dashing off down a hard-to-see alley between buildings. John followed without a glance back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, in my waking world there's RL crap happening, as RL crap tends to do. That long span between the last part and this one helped me iron a lot of things out, so at least there's a positive in there. That, and I didn't die in 15 minutes. ☺


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John finally catches up to the friend he once thought dead, and finds out _some_ of what it's been like living in Limbo.

"Dreams - they feel real while we're in them, don't they?" -Cobb, _Inception_

\----------

That damned coat was flowing out behind Sherlock like a cape, and John followed it - as usual. He didn't think of the pursuit, or Moriarty, or Limbo, or that fall, or the mystery of his totem; he just followed. They hurried between narrow alleys and into abandoned flats, up and down staircases and across roofs. Surely the monster in the park couldn't follow them this far - could it? Still Sherlock hurried on, as though fleeing from something. John glanced behind him and saw nothing. This, he decided, was ridiculous.

"Sherlock!" John called in a stage whisper. Something about the oppressive dark discouraged a full-throated yell, but Sherlock heard him. He glanced back, slowed, and climbed into a conveniently placed window. Apparently as an afterthought, one pale hand appeared at the open window and beckoned to John to follow. John glanced around - habit - and climbed through after him. 

He found himself standing in an abandoned living room. Or at least it looked abandoned; likely it wasn't. He didn't touch any of the dusty-looking furniture scattered about, at any rate. He was still breathing hard from their run, but Sherlock was just standing there, unruffled, with his hands behind his back. 

"Why aren't you dead?" Sherlock asked suddenly. 

John didn't have the first idea what to say in response to that. He sputtered a bit while Sherlock just stood there, looking impatient. It was disturbingly familiar, and John was hit anew with the fact that he had believed Sherlock dead for about five minutes. It was a five minutes that he'd rather forget, but they had been… horrible. They had seen his world end. 

Because he thought he was going to jail, he told himself. 

Sod that, he thought, and walked forward to embrace his friend. 

"I thought you were gone," he mumbled into Sherlock's collar. Sherlock didn't move, but he didn't stiffen uncomfortably, which John took to be a good sign. After a few seconds, when John was thinking really it would be better for both of them if he pulled away in a completely platonic fashion, he felt hands on his back. 

"And I thought you were one of his," Sherlock said, which was entirely unexpected. John did pull away at that, and stared at him.

"One of -- no. No, we should start at the beginning. No--" he corrected, shaking his head. "No, start with the important part. This is Limbo, and you're asleep."

Sherlock started, a look of open surprise on his face for just a moment, then it was as though a mask fell over it and he was his blank, haughty self again. 

"I knew that," he said, and frowned as though trying to remember something. Perhaps he _used_ to know it, John conceded, but he was forgetting as surely as the sky was blue. Well, the waking sky. In daytime. If it wasn't cloudy. 

"Where are we going?" he asked, mostly to stop his wildly galloping thoughts. "We lost that dog thing at least ten minutes ago."

"Baker Street," Sherlock said, frowning to himself. "I do know this is Limbo; I have to stay here."

"Hang on, one nonsensical statement at a time," John broke in. "This is not the way to Baker Street. It's not even the right direction. We weren't that far from--"

"221B, then," Sherlock insisted. "You were always so pedantic about things that are flexible."

"221B is not _flexible_ ," John insisted.

"Yes, it is. It's not far; near the British Museum."

John said nothing for a few seconds, waiting for this to make sense, but it didn't coalesce into something he recognized. "Why?" he settled on at last.

"Moriarty knew he could find me there from the start; I'm the… _prize_ he's after. I've lost count of how many times it's moved. I got into it through a manhole a couple times, and up a cable once. It was at the top of Tower Bridge a month or so ago. I had it in the back of a taxi - very clever of me - and Moriarty found it as usual and now he drives all the cabs. Bastard." 

"As usual," John said, trying to keep up with all this. "How do you know he's found a hiding place, if you're still, uh. Free to make up new ones? He can't want to grab you that badly."

"First he wants to-- well, you may as well know, there are a few of you. Other projections, you know." 

"You've made copies of me?" John said, trying for amusement. "And here I thought I was irreplaceable."

"It did take a couple of tries to get it right, I'll admit. But I was pleased with the results." 

"So there are two or three of me out there somewhere? Do you have a harem of them at Baker Street?" John asked, amused. 

"Hm. More like twenty or thirty. But no, they're not at Baker Street. Until I found you, I thought they were all dead."

" _Twenty_ or - wait, why?"

"Why did I believe them dead, or why so many? Never mind; the answers are the same. Moriarty took them. I knew he'd found my hiding place when he would leave… pieces of them… on my doorstep. I never went inside. Once, I suppose, but aside from that, never."

John was chilled to his core. _Pieces_. 

"What happened the time you went inside?" he asked, half-afraid to hear the answer. "What was in there?"

"Absolutely nothing," Sherlock assured him. "Nothing unusual, that is. Some childish silent alarms, easily circumvented. I went inside to fetch your gun."

"For defense?" John asked.

"No," Sherlock admitted. "He couldn't have hurt me even if he'd wanted to. Moriarty had found the hiding place, and sent most of that John back to me, still alive."

"Oh, God," John whispered. "And you had to--"

"It was just a projection. It was fine. But I didn't like to make any more." He shuddered very slightly, and John couldn't make a sound. "All the ones that appeared afterward were Moriarty's, all with a story of glorious escape, and all of them were spies to lead him to 221B."

"So - how did you know that I wasn't one of them?" Sherlock rolled his eyes at him, but as usual couldn't resist the opportunity to show off.

"Your limp," he said, sounding bored. "Moriarty never saw your limp in the waking world that I am aware of; it rarely makes itself known these days, anyway, yet you're limping, hence you are one of mine rather than one of his. Escaped, I suppose." He looked closely at John. "How did you do it? You weren't followed. There are no signs of physical abuse. Did you see his base of operations in the Shard? Tell me everything."

"He's in the Shard? Wait, wait, no, I'm not a projection. I'm - you know, me. The real thing." 

"They all say that," Sherlock said fondly. "But it's what makes them - _made_ them, rather - such effective hostages."

"Right," John managed. "Well, I'm not one, I haven't been to the Shard, and I haven't seen Moriarty except for all those projections that look like him driving cabs."

"You don't remember. Pity. But how did he make you forget?" Sherlock said, mostly to himself, touching John's forehead gently with one finger.

"I didn't forget; I wasn't there! I remember things that happened while we were awake, too." Fewer than he'd like, of course, but some things. "And things from a different dream. How the hell did you fake your death and make me - make Moriarty think he was the one dreaming, because my totem said we had it wrong," he asked, rather desperately.

"Almost all of my projections knew that." Sherlock began to move toward the window again - still open - listening for something that John couldn't discern. "We need to move. This isn't a good place to talk."

"But how did you do it?" A pause. "I bet none of your projections knew that part of it. You just liked explaining over and over how clever you'd been. Showing off."

Sherlock smirked at him, then turned back to the window. "It got tiresome after a while. The last few didn't know about the hospital." He turned back to John, who was looking at him expectantly and still trying to hide just how relieved he was. Sherlock, no doubt, could see it anyway.

"But for old times' sake, I'll explain on the way. It's been a while. Off we go."

He climbed gracefully out the window, and John followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks as always to my friend the beta. I told her she didn't have to do this chapter, and she did it anyway via email, lightening-fast. ;)
> 
> A little about the building Moriarty has set up in. The Shard is a new skyscraper in central London, fairly close to the edge of the Thames. It's ostentatious, expensive, and looks like it could hurt you. Mr. Westwood would love it. It was completed in summer 2012, and opened February 2013.    
> Shard website pictures: [here](http://www.the-shard.com/shard/gallery/images)  
>  And the top alone: [here](http://www.londonbridgequarter.com/the-shard/overview)


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock leads John around (not new) and actually explains things (new).

"That way, when you look at your totem, you know beyond a doubt that you’re not in someone else's dream." -Arthur, _Inception_

\----------

 

Once outside, Sherlock glanced briefly in the direction they'd been going and headed the opposite way. John considered pointing this out, but even when they were awake his comments were ignored, so he said nothing; just followed. 

They crossed the street and climbed yet another fire escape. John was beginning to doubt that Sherlock even knew how to proceed down the pavement like a normal person.

"You said you'd explain," John reminded him as Sherlock peered around a corner into someone's kitchen. 

"Of course," he said, and circumvented the kitchen, went brazenly out the front door of the flat and started down the stairs. John felt he could _see_ him sweeping happily into deduction/explanation mode, and felt, bizarrely, relieved. It was as though things had finally settled into their proper places. 

"Prestidigitation," Sherlock said grandly, glancing up from the landing of the winding stair to be sure John was paying attention. "Just a magic trick. He left his PASIV, and he wasn't looking the entire time, so I switched it with mine." He came to a sudden halt a few steps below and turned to face John, looking very serious. 

"And don't you think for _one second_ , John, that there was nothing but Somnacin in his device. Just because you're honest doesn't mean a murderous lunatic like Moriarty is." Sherlock must have seen what he was looking for in John's face, because he nodded to himself and continued down the stairs.

_That's why you had Mrs. Hudson mix up doses for us_ , John thought. He didn't want to say it aloud, though. The pieces falling into place were visible enough on his face, he assumed, and the last thing he needed was Sherlock pausing only to roll his eyes at him. 

"But you didn't expect me to tag along," he said anyway, to show that he was at least paying attention. 

"Oh, you were the most important participant of all, John. You were the dreamer."

John slowed. " _I_ made up that nightmare?"

"The setting only; you know how it works," Sherlock threw back. "My PASIV has the lead colors switched - the dreamer is usually the black cable, which I gave to Moriarty." They were outside now, walking side-by-side, and John could see the devious look on Sherlock's face.

"On mine, though, it's the one to the right of the black one. It was you. You didn't expect to be the one controlling the dream; didn't know what to expect, so we dreamed exactly the place where we went to sleep, and went to places with which you were familiar. After that, I just had to convince Moriarty that I was not a threat, and death was the easiest way. Dying is easy." 

"Less easy for some of us," John said under his breath.

Sherlock turned his head to glare at him. "Moriarty had to be convinced to stay in the dream, and that it wasn't, in fact, a dream. I had to jump to preserve that illusion. Besides, it was part of the plan." 

"You planned for me to believe you were dead."

Sherlock sighed, and turned yet another corner after checking that it was clear. John was relieved; he'd heard a rather loud clicking noise coming toward them, and didn't want to wait around to find out what it was. 

"I told you before we slept," Sherlock explained, with less impatience than usual as he believed John-the-projection to be ignorant of this, "not to bring your totem. If things had gone to plan, then you would have known we were asleep, and thought that Moriarty was the dreamer; in reality, _you_ were the dreamer, John. You had held Moriarty's totem, so to him it looked correct. Your totem would have also looked as you imagined it. You rely on it too much to ascertain whether you are awake; it can only be used that way when you are not the dreamer."

"…So what happened after?" John asked, when it appeared Sherlock had finished his 'everyone else is an idiot' rant for the moment. 

"Look at that," Sherlock said instead, pointing at an establishment around yet another corner. It was named 'Angelo's'; unlike the rest of London, it appeared to be lively and colorful. John could see many tables with diners talking animatedly over steaming meals. On the front window table, however, there was only a single candle and two glasses of red wine. Moriarty sat in the chair looking out, immaculately dressed and waving at them. 

John pulled immediately behind the wall as though a hail of bullets had streamed toward him. 

"What the hell is he doing in there? Are you crazy; he'll see you!" he hissed in a harsh whisper. 

"It's all right," Sherlock said, disturbingly nonchalant. "It's a projection of him. He's always there, never comes out, and never reports me to the real one unless I go inside."

It took John a moment to reply. "You've tested that theory, haven't you?" he asked flatly. 

"Of course," Sherlock said, staring at the restaurant. It was just as well; John was fuming. There was no telling what other absolutely idiotic things Sherlock had done here in the name of scientific inquiry for - however long. 

"You didn't answer the question," he managed through clenched teeth. "What happened after you jumped?" 

Sherlock turned away from Angelo's and started off down the street.

"Reality deviated from my plan," he said at last. 

"Really," John said. It wasn't a question. 

"None of the other John projections needed to know this," Sherlock insisted. John just looked at him, one eyebrow raised. Sherlock sighed and continued down the street. 

"I meant to wake up at Baker Street after I fell," he said. "I would then wake you, and Mrs. Hudson had made sure that her concoction for Moriarty was strong enough that when you woke and the dream collapsed, killing him in the dream, that he would go straight to Limbo rather than waking. He could just stay there. Within a few days - well before his body stopped functioning in the waking world - there would be no coming back.

"Unfortunately, the 7% stronger solution I asked her to make for me was obviously stronger even than that, as it sent me here. It must have been; I calculated it precisely. I thought I could handle it," he said, more to himself than to John. 

"I was going to get myself killed in the dream somehow or other, as it was _imperative_ that I woke before Moriarty did. I didn't like the idea of him having access to our sleeping bodies."

"You could still leave," John said suddenly. "You could leave now. I know how you could do it."

"I can't leave."

"Why?" John all but wails. "We'll wake up and shoot him where he sleeps. Come back with me."

Sherlock only lifted an eyebrow. "Rather dishonorable behavior from you, John. And think of the mess it will make on the carpet."

"I've shot him unarmed once. I'll do it again."

Sherlock looked at him, apparently to verify the truth of this statement.

"When?" 

John took a bit longer with the distraction of climbing over a street barrier than he ought, but once over, Sherlock was still looking at him.

"After I thought you were dead," he said at last. 

Sherlock turned that over. "It wouldn't have saved me, if I had really died. You only kill someone to save someone else."

That was true - he had had the luxury of it being true through his entire army career, in his position. "I couldn't look at him," he said, willing that to have made a difference. "He was _gloating._ And he - I was not myself. Look, we can talk about this after we get back," he said hurriedly.

"If I leave," Sherlock said, after another distressingly long look at John, "then he leaves. Mrs. Hudson's concoction sent him here, but now that I'm here, he's fixated on me. If I stay, he'll stay."

Sherlock must have caught at least some of the pitying look John was giving him, because he hurried to add, "It's never dull here. He is endlessly inventive; it's fascinating, the novel ways he comes up with to track me, find my hiding places, find things that are important--" He stopped talking, but increased his pace.

"And making so many versions of me was a liability," John said, nearly running to keep up. "It didn't take you twenty or thirty kidnappings to figure that out."

"Over there," Sherlock said suddenly, coming to an abrupt halt and pointing at a building that looked like someone had inexpertly piled huge, concrete Legos on top of each other. John looked where he pointed, frowning at the knowledge that the building didn't exist - or didn't exist _there_ \- in the waking world.

"What?" John asked, staring at it. 

"My mind palace. No, we haven't time," he added when John started toward it eagerly. "It moves as well, but it's too... complex for a visit now. Perhaps when we go out again."

Something tugged at John's memory - a niggling thought that felt important somehow. What it could possibly have to do with Sherlock's mind palace, though, he had no idea.

"Fine," he sighed, as they passed on the other side of the street. It really was huge. "How long have you been here?" he asked, staring at it. 

"Hard to say. About three years," Sherlock replied uncertainly, and John looked at him in shock. 

"Three _years_?"

"I would like to be more precise," Sherlock said, frustrated, "but time is so… _imprecise_ by its very nature, here."

He rubbed his hands at his temples; clearly, this was an ongoing frustration. 

"It's all right," John assured him hastily. "Really, I was just asking. Er. How close are we?" he asked, attempting to change Sherlock's focus.

"Nearly there, actually," he said, latching onto the new subject with relief. "This way." He lead John down a narrow alley until they were staring at a grate at the base of a building in the shadowy murk. On the wet ground in front of it was a paper packet, like a mail delivery. Sherlock eyed it, then picked it up, apparently unconcerned. 

"Oh," he said, peering inside. "Thumbs."

John had been about to extend his hand, then jerked it back in horror. "What," he said, though he had heard what Sherlock had said perfectly clearly.

"It seems he's found this one. Never mind; we'll be gone soon. No one's gone in, I can tell."

"Right, so that's just fine," John said, starting to get a bit frazzled despite himself. "You just find _bits_ of me on the ground in front of-- Sherlock, you didn't go into any of them but that one when you got the gun; you can't be sure that--"

"I'm sure," Sherlock interrupted. "You just lift this-" he said, pulling the grate away easily - "and in you go." He nodded at John to go ahead, and after a pause, John ducked obediently into the dark while Sherlock closed the grate behind them. John could hear something dripping, and shivered. 

"This way," Sherlock directed, leading the way into the dark. John followed blindly - not a metaphor, for once - and Sherlock somehow located a doorknob and pulled open the door to their flat.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock get a visitor at this version of 221B, and finally, FINALLY get a clue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the quote doesn't belong. Just go with it. ;)

"Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too, so I stayed in the darkness with you." - _Cosmic Love_ , Florence & the Machine

\----------

John cautiously went through and was nearly blinded by the not-that-bright lights inside. Looking back, the door they had come through appeared to be the same as the door at the top of the stairs, from the inside of 221B. There was the hallway and the stairs leading down rather than darkness or the grate, and from the half-open windows he could hear traffic on the street below. Sherlock had crossed immediately to the fireplace and had his back to John, fiddling with the skull.

"How--" John began, then broke off. "Oh, never mind." It just _was_ ; he'd never understand it, anyway. 

"So what do you think, John? Is it a good representation? I did take the skull from the original place, but everything is recreated, otherwise." Sherlock sounded, for once, like he really did want John's opinion on something other than a dead body. "You could even make tea," he added, turning to face him. 

_For you_ , John thought, but he was somewhat flattered nevertheless. He felt a little of the tension draining from his shoulders for the first time since arriving in this horrible place.

"It's perfect," he assured him. "I feel like Mrs. Hudson is about to come up the stairs with homemade bis--" he broke off, mid-sentence.

"Mrs. Hudson," he says numbly. "I remember what I have to do. What she told me to do."

"Told you _when_?" Sherlock asked. "You've never actually met her, you know."

"I have. Before I came to Limbo, she told me to kill you to get you out."

Sherlock didn't appear to be alarmed by this, despite the fact that he knew John didn't need a weapon to carry out that threat. He took a few steps closer, in fact. 

"John. You've never met her. You aren't the real John."

John glared at him.

"You want me to prove it, yes?" Sherlock asked, and there was something in his voice that in anyone else John would identify as apprehension. But John just looked at him, trying to remember the fourteen ways he could kill a man unarmed, and not focus on Sherlock's proximity. It would be a tragedy to do this. He was aware that he had lost it completely when he'd thought it had happened for real. But this wasn't for real, was it? Surely that was impossible.

"John." 

Sherlock stepped right into John's personal space. It would be ridiculously easy to just grab that long, gorgeous neck and twist. But John didn't move. A small part of him was stamping its foot and yelling at him to get on with it, but he still didn't move except to uselessly clench one fist, and - Sherlock was leaning in and - _kissing_ him. Just a tiny, light peck on the lips. Then before he could even draw a breath, he was being kissed again, on the corner of his mouth. And again - forehead. Cheek. The side of his nose. Brushing his lips again. 

John couldn't actually move. He stood frozen, disbelieving, and a tiny bubble of hope that he'd kept shoved far down in his gut began to expand. Sherlock pulled away, looking regretful.

"Real John would never let me kiss him," he said sadly, but he still held John's head in place. 

"Sure about that, are you?" John asked, after an endless pause. He had the impression that someone else had taken over his brain, because he certainly wasn't in control. But in dreams, of course, you didn’t have to be the same person you were when awake. If there was one foundation to all this madness, dream-sharing and Limbo and PASIV devices and switched leads, it was that. He believed it, even if no one else did. He leaned in.

His hands came up to mirror Sherlock's, digging slightly into the black curls he'd thought about far too often. They were soft and yielding, and they sure as hell didn't feel like a dream. 

John was desperate enough that his technique was a little lacking, but he was still able to give Sherlock a real, searing, deep kiss. The lack of technique didn't honestly matter. 

_Finally,_ he thought. _Finally._ He struggled to keep the kiss shallow as the last thing he wanted was to scare Sherlock away, but he had slowly come to accept that this was not a fantasy kept only for his dreaming mind. It was still intense and messy, and felt like falling and being caught at the same time, and he had a moment to wildly hope that Sherlock felt the same, or this was going to be very embarrassing when they woke up.

They'd only been kissing for about five seconds when Sherlock pulled away, flushed and more shocked than John had ever seen him.

"That didn't come out of your brain, Sherlock," John managed, trying to sound like he was in control of himself. Sherlock only stared back at him. He looked almost painfully young.

Dimly, through the dual haze of wanting more and trying to appear as if he _wasn't_ desperate for more, John could hear the rattle of a cab pulling to a stop outside. 

Sherlock got that assessing look that John was so used to seeing, though this time there was a touch of panic thrown in. 

"What sort of tie pin did Moriarty have when he came to visit us, John?" he demanded abruptly, peering at John with the full force of his considerable deductive power.

John actually started to lean in again, but managed to stop himself. It seemed an odd question for this particular moment, but at least it was forcing him to concentrate. 

"Er. A fox," he said slowly. "It was silver; I remember thinking he was too much of a slimy, slippery git to model himself after a fox," he added.

Sherlock stared at him, then reached out with those long arms without looking, grabbed the skull from the mantle, and whacked him on the back of the head. Instantly, everything went black. 

He woke up on something soft, and even in the darkness he could tell that he was in Sherlock's room. He climbed off the bed where he had been deposited and picked his way carefully across the floor. The door had been jammed somehow, but John found that he could get into the bathroom, and the door from there to the hallway leading to the kitchen was not locked. John didn't fool himself that Sherlock would make such a silly mistake. The jammed bedroom door had urged caution, not forced containment. Something was wrong.

He opened the hall door silently and made his way through the darkened kitchen. He could hear someone quietly climbing the stairs to the silent flat - ridiculous given that the stairs weren't really there - but then, none of this was, so he was better off just accepting it. 

There was the telltale squeak of the sixth stair. Whoever it was had been trying to be quiet about it, and Sherlock would know better than to step there, so it couldn't be him. John hid himself just behind the pocket of the glass door that led to the sitting room, and waited for their visitor to step into the room.

"Taxi for John Watson," said a voice. 

The man that walked boldly into their front room was one with whom John was passingly familiar. He had been a taxi driver during one of their earlier cases, a suspect who, it had been discovered, had been poisoning people for Moriarty. Dirty business, John thought, during that frenzied time between the Monkford job and meeting the man himself. 

The driver, Jeff something, had been shot and killed before his trial. And yet here he was in the entrance to their flat, calmly looking for his passenger. John shifted slightly behind the mottled glass just as the man turned slightly. There was a huge bloodstain right over his heart and the exit wound, John could see, was dripping a bit and making a mess on their rug. He took a breath and fought baci a shocked yell at the fact that there was a man, dead and bleeding and calm, standing in their living room. John braced himself to enter the silent room, when he heard yet more footsteps on the stairs leading up. Another moment, and he saw himself step into view.

"Looking for me, I guess," the other John said, lips compressed into a thin line. "You know that I'm armed."

The real John blinked, and stayed silent. 

"I know," the dead cabbie said airily. "It's not going to work on me, and if you kill anyone else they'll wake. Can't have that, can we? Anyhow, it's not _you_ he's trying to get to." He turned, unconcerned, and started for the stairs. "You can come along quietly, or I and some of the friends I can call will make you. It's your choice."

The false John hesitated. The man was scarily good, and John had an excellent idea of who was behind the projection. Or rather, the forgery.

It looked toward where John was hiding and seemed to see him there, or some trace of him, as John was fairly certain he was completely hidden. It smiled a little and gave the same click of the tongue and wink that Sherlock had given John when they had first met. John could see the mask slip just for a moment, and the man behind the forgery was both terribly nervous and terribly excited. Sherlock nervous and excited could in no universe be a good thing. The false John followed the cabbie out.

John stood in shocked silence for all of two seconds, then bolted upstairs for his gun. The Shard, Sherlock had said; John had no doubt that the cabbie would take the false John straight to Moriarty. He checked that he had bullets, thoughts flying more clearly than they had since he dropped into this place. He'd have to get there on foot and try to avoid Moriarty's projections; there was no way he was taking a taxi, that was for sure. 

He grabbed his jacket from its usual place on the back of the door; his gun was tucked into his waistband, safety on. He really needed to get a holster, he thought for the hundredth time, and shaking his head at himself, jogged out the door.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John tries to go to the rescue, and has quite the eventful journey.

"Once an idea has taken hold in the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate." -Cobb, _Inception_

\----------

John reemerged into the tunnel as soon as he stepped out of the door to the flat. Sherlock must have taken the packet of… thumbs… from the entrance and hid it away somewhere - likely the vegetable crisper. For once, body parts hidden in their refrigerator was a mercy. John was trying to avoid even thinking about them, as thoughts like that led to fearful contemplation of what strange amusements Moriarty might dream up for his new acquisition, even if he was fooled into thinking Sherlock was a John projection. Perhaps especially if he thought he was a John projection.

Right, no, denial was his friend.

Once he was back to the street, John kept to the shadows and hid often. It was a good thing, too, as Moriarty's projections were out in force since the discovery of a 'new' John-shaped one that Sherlock had supposedly made. John knew that the reasoning was that 'Sherlock might have made more, after all.' Sherlock could be coerced, he could be gotten to, he could be bargained with, now that Moriarty had this projection. The whole thing was just sick. John made a face, and forced himself to walk a little faster.

His tendency to hide at every strange noise and light was a good instinct, as it turned out, but it meant that his progress was very slow. If it wasn't for the occasional patch of thick fog that made visibility almost impossibly low when inside it, he'd never get anywhere. He was also fairly certain he should be tired by now - racing and then sneaking across town with adrenaline running high in both directions did that to you - but he wasn't tired in the least. He supposed that technically had to do with the fact that he was asleep, but when he tried to think about that it made his head swim, so he didn't. 

Crossing the river was going to be the most difficult part, as there would be no place to hide on the bridge. After some debate with himself, he skirted his way to London Bridge as opposed to the more decorative (and therefore easier to hide on) Tower Bridge, reasoning that saving precious minutes was the most important thing. After all, John reasoned, if he got there too late, he may as well not have arrived there at all. With that in mind, he made his careful, halting way to the start of the bridge and paused to listen for activity. All was quiet, which made him rather suspicious, but there was nothing to do but start across, keeping as close to the sides as possible. He was on the wide pedestrian pavement on the left side, walking as quickly as he could and jogging when he had breath to do so, when he heard the rattle of an approaching taxicab. It was easy to distinguish in the silence, and still approaching the bridge, but John knew he would be easy to spot if it came in his direction. He crouched down in the corner formed by footpath and the glorified railing, looking back fearfully.

The cab slowed as it approached the end of the bridge, then turned onto it.

"Shit," John muttered from his crouch. There was no way the driver wouldn't see him when the car came closer, despite the patchy fog. He looked for a hiding place in both directions up and down the bridge: nothing. He looked across at the tiny median between lanes: nothing. John cursed some more, then grabbed the barrier that kept pedestrians from falling into the river, and hauled himself over.

He hung there over the water with only his fingers visible from the bridge, poking through tiny slats in the concrete barrier. The rattle of the cab's engine seemed to take ages to reach him, as if the driver was deliberately slowing, while John tried not to shift his grip (it wouldn't help, he told himself as it slipped slightly) or to look down. At long last, the sound passed him by, growing fainter. John didn't wait for it to get far. He knew exactly how cold that water was - at the bank, at least - and he was terribly close to dropping into it. With no small amount of effort, he swung his legs back and forth a few times until he could swing one up onto the concrete parapet and slowly, slowly drag himself back over it. 

"Need to get back into fighting shape," he muttered to himself once again (which he did at least once a week since he had been discharged and was able to stand) and, slightly hunched, took off again for the jagged spike of the Shard he could see across the bridge.

When at last he reached the base of the building, he hid in the shadows of a small church nearby and surveyed his options. No one was around, to all appearances - though he had learned that appearances were rarely reflections of the truth, around here. Still, he had nothing but his eyes to go by at the moment. He checked that the gun was still in his waistband at the small of his back. He could feel it there without reaching, but this last indulgence he allowed himself for the sake of feeling as comfortable as possible. With one final glance around, he crossed to one of the many entrances.

It was quite large there at the base, even without that other little building squatting behind it like a particularly ugly parasite. It was at least fifty meters long on each side, with rows of revolving doors inviting entry. He tried one at random, and somewhat surprisingly, it turned easily. Inside, the place was dark, empty, and cavernous. His footfalls echoed strangely in the lobby; he told himself that it was only because there were no other bodies here to muffle the sound. Perhaps it was even true.

It was clear to him where there should be banks of lifts - fancy, carpeted, maybe express ones that go only to floors above a certain number - but there was only one. It was a tiny, dirty thing that looked unsafe and about fifty years old. There was no door in the front; only a grate the occupant pulled across for 'safety' before the tiny box moved.

When he cautiously entered he found 87 buttons, all neatly labeled with their floor number, and the one at the very bottom was shaped like a grinning skull. John rolled his eyes; if he wasn't careful, he'd perish from the melodrama of it all. It was clear which one he needed, however. He pushed the skull in and the box began to move.

He wasn't surprised that the lift was rising; Moriarty didn't seem the type to cower in a basement, real or not. Probably the top, and thanks to the lift's old-fashioned grate, he could see every floor go by as he rose. John was at first fascinated by the impossibility of the scenes before him. He caught only a few seconds as the box gained speed, the time from ceiling to floor as each scene passed him. One of the first was a view of a shrunken old man, surrounded by squalor and colorful paintings. A haze of smoke curled around him as he carefully dotted the white paint of stars onto a black sky. Then John saw what was clearly a public pool with a race between several young men going on; the scent of chlorine wafted into the lift while parents and spectators cheered from the stands, their shouts echoing on the tiles. The next floor was a blonde woman laughing uproariously at a smaller, sulking man while a younger man glared from a polished kitchen. Next, an empty living room with an elaborate chandelier from which slowly dripped something red and viscous. Then an entirely lightless floor flashed by, from which John could hear and the sound of grinding machinery. He glimpsed a young man jumping on a trampoline and firing a shotgun - and the floors were moving too quickly now; he blinked rapidly and glanced at the floor to regain some sense of equilibrium. 

John had no idea where he was; despite the buttons there was no guarantee that 87 was, in fact, the number of floors in this tower. He felt like he was in a lift in Barad-Dur, then realized that Sherlock wouldn't get that, then felt a twist of nerves all over again for his overly-confident, self-sacrificing friend. He checked his pistol again as floors flashed by; he could feel that it was still there… and then the lift began to slow. There was a pleasant _ding_ as it creaked slowly to a complete halt, and he pulled back the grate to step out into a neatly organized nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A good view of London Bridge to help get a visual of John's struggle: [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:London_Bridge_-_geograph.org.uk_-_478726.jpg)


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moriarty continues lunacy and is very much Not Good. John finds Sherlock, who is not at all pleased to see him (well, maybe a little).

"If you can steal an idea from someone's mind, why can't you plant one there instead?" -Saito, _Inception_

—————

John was not quite certain he had found the correct Evil Headquarters. As he stepped carefully out of the lift, alert to dangers ahead, behind, and above, he only saw evidence of Moriarty's peculiar kind of dramatic madness; there were elements here and there of a funhouse. He spared a glance for a wavy mirror, but spared another when he saw that his reflection was, to all appearances, absolutely normal. That couldn't be right - he could see that the mirror was bowing out in places and definitely didn't look like one someone would find over their bathroom sink. A flash of wool at the corner of his eye made him look down - and take several steps backward before he realized what he was seeing. His body looked bizarrely distended; impossibly long arms drooped at his sides and he was far too wide to be tottering about on legs that were perhaps 30 centimeters long. He _felt_ normal, though. John staggered away from the mirror and - suddenly looked just as he always had. Breathing hard, he patted himself down nervously as if to make sure he hadn't left a piece of himself behind somehow before his brain kicked out of its paralyzed state. He glared back at the offending mirror and concentrated on easily dodging a cartoonishly obvious boxing glove on a stick that punched at him in a slow, regular rhythm. Ahead, he could see a slowly spinning disc of spiraled black and white meant to disorient, but surrounded by nothing disorienting whatsoever. There should be optical illusions, a mirror maze, something. Instead the way ahead was perfectly clear, illuminated lights along the floor indicating which way John should go. He followed them, perfectly aware that he was expected.

The corridor was quite short, as it turned out; after a few bizarre turns, it opened onto a large room with glass walls. The city below was brightly lit, utterly different from the hazy, dark version of it that John had just traveled through. What was most striking about the room, however, was its utter emptiness except for an occupied circle of around twenty chairs.

There were other versions of himself seated in each chair. John reminded himself over and over - from one second to the next, in fact - that they were projections, but it didn't really help. Many had missing eyes; on some, both eyes were gone. He tried to ignore how many of them were missing thumbs, but that paper packet of them sitting innocently outside 221B kept appearing in his mind’s eye and making that difficult. Hands, toes, entire limbs were gone from some of them. Bloodstains had dried on more than one chin, suggesting teeth had been pried out - or possibly tongues. John tried not to look too closely. All of them looked half-starved and were eerily silent. Beaten.

Except for one, of course. One looked sharp-eyed and inappropriately excited and not at all happy to see John. He was thankfully whole - John nearly stumbled in his relief at that - and the false John shook his head very, very slightly. 

John couldn’t see all the way around the circle, but he could neither see nor hear any sign of Moriarty, and thought this might be his only chance. Sherlock wouldn’t like to be rescued, the idiot, so John didn’t think he could expect any help from that quarter. Training as a military architect meant that he knew the basics of caution, but he had no backup, and vigilance would only get him so far. He stepped as cautiously as he could out of the mouth of the corridor, but he didn’t need to go far for better light. He took careful aim, right at Sherlock’s head, and fired.

_BANG._

A little red flag shot out from the end of John’s gun. BANG, it said on the flag in cartoonish letters inside an exclamatory circle.

“What the…” John muttered, turning the gun to examine it, flag still protruding from the barrel.

“Well done!” cried an all-too-familiar voice. John’s head shot up from where it had been bent over the gun and watched as Moriarty strolled into view. He wasn’t visibly armed, but John didn’t trust that that meant he was safe. 

“Moriarty,” he said, not even having to try to sound dull and tired.

“Yes; you can see me and everything,” the man said, sidling into view. John watched him, unwilling to drop the useless gun, but fought not to raise it again as the man oozed his way behind the projection John knew to be Sherlock. Moriarty smirked at him. God but John hated that smirk.

“You’ve rather shown your hand there, Johnny Boy,” Moriarty said, to all appearances barely containing his mirth. “And his, to be perfectly frank.” He winked at John, and laid a pale hand on the false John’s shoulder, which made the real John start forward to do… something. There was a puff of smoke that completely engulfed the false John before he could take more than a step, though, and within seconds it cleared to reveal Sherlock.

“What a surprise!” Moriarty yelled in delight - though if one looked beyond the grin, it was easy to see that there was no visible emotion in his eyes at all. “Why don’t you come and join us, Mr. Watson, and then we can really get started.”

Moriarty gestured extravagantly, and with a smaller puff of smoke, an empty chair appeared next to Sherlock’s.

“I don’t think so,” John said, but before he could finish the sentence, red dots of light had appeared on his extremities. They were distressingly familiar.

“I just love you to bits,” Moriarty said, without a trace of inflection. “Won’t you have a seat?” he asked. The dots appeared on Sherlock as well; at least three that John could easily see on both knees and an arm. He started walking slowly around the circle, casually scanning for options while trying not to look terribly obvious about it. 

“You know,” John said as he walked, “I meant to kill you when I shot you in the face. I intend to finish that job.”

“Temper, temper,” Moriarty said, as though he was scolding an errant child. “Nobody gets to me.” There was a sound from somewhere of a handgun being cocked to fire, though John could see neither the weapon nor its handler. “And no one ever will,” Moriarty continued as John reached the chair. There was a pause in which nobody moved at all.

“Watch me,” John said, and grabbed the chair. Immediately there was a blazing pain in his shoulder - not the injured one, but the other, and John stumbled. Sherlock (entirely himself again, down to the polished shoes and ridiculous coat) leapt out of his chair, having escaped like a magician whatever ridiculous binding Moriarty had put him into, and stepped between John and the direction of the gun. There was the unmistakeable sound of a shot, and Sherlock fell to one knee and _howled_.

John flung the chair as hard as he could at the nearest window. It wasn’t difficult to find; they were _everywhere_ here.

“Good!” he heard Moriarty exclaim as it shattered, but John couldn’t look - didn’t have time to look. The chair had followed an explosion of glass out of sight, leaving a tempting and sharp-edged hole of London night.

John grabbed Sherlock with his good (well… better) arm and literally dragged him toward it. Sherlock seemed to be fighting not to yell in pain as John leaped out the broken window pulling Sherlock just behind him, both of them trailing blood. No one stopped John and, falling to their deaths, neither of them let go.

"I'm surprised the glass wasn't bulletproof," John heard, thoughtful but loud enough to make out over the rushing of the wind. 

John woke up laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my beta friend. She has the LAST CHAPTER. The end is near!


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Moriarty continues lunacy and is very much Not Good. John finds Sherlock, who is not at all pleased to see him (well, maybe a little).

"If you can steal an idea from someone's mind, why can't you plant one there instead?" -Saito, _Inception_

—————

John was not quite certain he had found the correct Evil Headquarters. As he stepped carefully out of the lift, alert to dangers ahead, behind, and above, he only saw evidence of Moriarty's peculiar kind of dramatic madness; there were elements here and there of a funhouse. He spared a glance for a wavy mirror, but spared another when he saw that his reflection was, to all appearances, absolutely normal. That couldn't be right - he could see that the mirror was bowing out in places and definitely didn't look like one someone would find over their bathroom sink. A flash of wool at the corner of his eye made him look down - and take several steps backward before he realized what he was seeing. His body looked bizarrely distended; impossibly long arms drooped at his sides and he was far too wide to be tottering about on legs that were perhaps 30 centimeters long. He _felt_ normal, though. John staggered away from the mirror and - suddenly looked just as he always had. Breathing hard, he patted himself down nervously as if to make sure he hadn't left a piece of himself behind somehow before his brain kicked out of its paralyzed state. He glared back at the offending mirror and concentrated on easily dodging a cartoonishly obvious boxing glove on a stick that punched at him in a slow, regular rhythm. Ahead, he could see a slowly spinning disc of spiraled black and white meant to disorient, but surrounded by nothing disorienting whatsoever. There should be optical illusions, a mirror maze, something. Instead the way ahead was perfectly clear, illuminated lights along the floor indicating which way John should go. He followed them, perfectly aware that he was expected.

The corridor was quite short, as it turned out; after a few bizarre turns, it opened onto a large room with glass walls. The city below was brightly lit, utterly different from the hazy, dark version of it that John had just traveled through. What was most striking about the room, however, was its utter emptiness except for an occupied circle of around twenty chairs.

There were other versions of himself seated in each chair. John reminded himself over and over - from one second to the next, in fact - that they were projections, but it didn't really help. Many had missing eyes; on some, both eyes were gone. He tried to ignore how many of them were missing thumbs, but that paper packet of them sitting innocently outside 221B kept appearing in his mind’s eye and making that difficult. Hands, toes, entire limbs were gone from some of them. Bloodstains had dried on more than one chin, suggesting teeth had been pried out - or possibly tongues. John tried not to look too closely. All of them looked half-starved and were eerily silent. Beaten.

Except for one, of course. One looked sharp-eyed and inappropriately excited and not at all happy to see John. He was thankfully whole - John nearly stumbled in his relief at that - and the false John shook his head very, very slightly. 

John couldn’t see all the way around the circle, but he could neither see nor hear any sign of Moriarty, and thought this might be his only chance. Sherlock wouldn’t like to be rescued, the idiot, so John didn’t think he could expect any help from that quarter. Training as a military architect meant that he knew the basics of caution, but he had no backup, and vigilance would only get him so far. He stepped as cautiously as he could out of the mouth of the corridor, but he didn’t need to go far for better light. He took careful aim, right at Sherlock’s head, and fired.

_BANG._

A little red flag shot out from the end of John’s gun. BANG, it said on the flag in cartoonish letters inside an exclamatory circle.

“What the…” John muttered, turning the gun to examine it, flag still protruding from the barrel.

“Well done!” cried an all-too-familiar voice. John’s head shot up from where it had been bent over the gun and watched as Moriarty strolled into view. He wasn’t visibly armed, but John didn’t trust that that meant he was safe. 

“Moriarty,” he said, not even having to try to sound dull and tired.

“Yes; you can see me and everything,” the man said, sidling into view. John watched him, unwilling to drop the useless gun, but fought not to raise it again as the man oozed his way behind the projection John knew to be Sherlock. Moriarty smirked at him. God but John hated that smirk.

“You’ve rather shown your hand there, Johnny Boy,” Moriarty said, to all appearances barely containing his mirth. “And his, to be perfectly frank.” He winked at John, and laid a pale hand on the false John’s shoulder, which made the real John start forward to do… something. There was a puff of smoke that completely engulfed the false John before he could take more than a step, though, and within seconds it cleared to reveal Sherlock.

“What a surprise!” Moriarty yelled in delight - though if one looked beyond the grin, it was easy to see that there was no visible emotion in his eyes at all. “Why don’t you come and join us, Mr. Watson, and then we can really get started.”

Moriarty gestured extravagantly, and with a smaller puff of smoke, an empty chair appeared next to Sherlock’s.

“I don’t think so,” John said, but before he could finish the sentence, red dots of light had appeared on his extremities. They were distressingly familiar.

“I just love you to bits,” Moriarty said, without a trace of inflection. “Won’t you have a seat?” he asked. The dots appeared on Sherlock as well; at least three that   
John could easily see on both knees and an arm. He started walking slowly around the circle, casually scanning for options while trying not to look terribly obvious about it. 

“You know,” John said as he walked, “I meant to kill you when I shot you in the face. I intend to finish that job.”

“Temper, temper,” Moriarty said, as though he was scolding an errant child. “Nobody gets to me.” There was a sound from somewhere of a handgun being cocked to fire, though John could see neither the weapon nor its handler. “And no one ever will,” Moriarty continued as John reached the chair. There was a pause in which nobody moved at all.

“Watch me,” John said, and grabbed the chair. Immediately there was a blazing pain in his shoulder - not the injured one, but the other, and John stumbled. Sherlock (entirely himself again, down to the polished shoes and ridiculous coat) leapt out of his chair, having escaped like a magician whatever ridiculous binding Moriarty had put him into, and stepped between John and the direction of the gun. There was the unmistakeable sound of a shot, and Sherlock fell to one knee and _howled_.

John flung the chair as hard as he could at the nearest window. It wasn’t difficult to find; they were _everywhere_ here.

“Good!” he heard Moriarty exclaim as it shattered, but John couldn’t look - didn’t have time to look. The chair had followed an explosion of glass out of sight, leaving a tempting and sharp-edged hole of London night.

John grabbed Sherlock with his good (well… better) arm and literally dragged him toward it. Sherlock seemed to be fighting not to yell in pain as John leaped out the broken window pulling Sherlock just behind him, both of them trailing blood. No one stopped John and, falling to their deaths, neither of them let go.

"I'm surprised the glass wasn't bulletproof," John heard, thoughtful but loud enough to make out over the rushing of the wind. 

John woke up laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my beta friend. She has the LAST CHAPTER. The end is near!


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up together turns out to be more complicated and more intimate than either of them expected. And now: the next step.

(Mal, slowly) “You’re waiting for a train. You don’t know where this train will take you, but it doesn’t matter. How can it not matter where this train will take you?”  
(Cobb, entering) “…Because we’ll be together.”  
- _Inception_

—————

John and Sherlock snapped awake in the chairs at 221B exactly where they had fallen asleep next to the madman with the tainted PASIV. Moriarty himself was nowhere to be seen, much to John’s disappointment. He had been looking forward to shooting the bastard in his sleep.

He didn’t immediately see Mrs. Hudson, which caused him to panic for about two seconds until he realized that Sherlock was already bending over her prone form on the couch. 

“She’s just unconscious, already stirring,” he reported nonchalantly. John wasn’t fooled - he knew the man would have dashed over to that couch the instant he woke, and never mind his careless tone.

“Thank God,” John said anyway, genuinely relieved. He stood and started to cross to her, though she was already trying to sit up.

“Oh, thank heavens you’re back; he snuck up behind me or I’d never have left you boys alone.”

Sherlock only hummed, sounding concerned (for him) and lifted her hair to examine the head wound. John thought he was probably working hard to curb his opinion of Mrs. Hudson’s hearing, given the creaky step which made such a loud noise that even John would have recognized it. Mrs. Hudson swatted at Sherlock and John took over.

“So you didn’t see your attacker?” he prompted, and turned to look at Sherlock as the man let out a noisy breath. 

“Clearly a colleague of Moriarty’s, as he bothered to carry him out of here when Moriarty hadn’t-“ Mrs. Hudson gave him a significant look, and to John’s amazement, Sherlock corrected himself - “couldn’t have woken on his own yet. He is right handed where Moriarty is not, over six feet tall, used to improvising with materials at hand considering he used that vase from the downstairs entryway to incapacitate Mrs. Hudson, fastidious considering he took both Moriarty and the PASIV with him—“

“He?” John asked, just to be contrary, but Sherlock didn’t miss a beat. 

“Strength of a single blow rendering a healthy person unconscious - even given her advanced age-“ (Mrs. Hudson huffed at this), “-a man is statistically more likely to be both strong enough and potentially inclined toward unprovoked violence, though admittedly studies in the UK are inconclusive. It is, however, unlikely that Moriarty would employ a second person to carry an unconscious body if he could get by with a single one. He is very good with money. And dead weight is never as easy to transport as it looks, even when you don’t have to be careful.” 

John didn’t ask how he knew that last one.

“Well.” He lowered Mrs. Hudson’s hair and gave her his best 'serious' look.

“Someone will be down to check on you a few times tonight—“

“I’m not sleeping; I’ll do it,” Sherlock said, and John tried not to look too surprised. 

“Because he misjudged the amount of sedative he would need and had a nice, long nap,” John muttered. “But I really think you’ll be fine,” he finished more loudly. “I’m… glad. And glad that that fifteen minutes thing wasn’t necessary after all.” He smiled at her, and Sherlock looked peeved to be left out of the joke.

“Yes, yes, thank you, Mrs. Hudson; we’ll be fine as well, now,” he said. “You should get back to your - whatever you’re brewing up down there; must be something on the burner. I can smell it.”

John couldn’t smell a thing, but Mrs. Hudson looked a little concerned.

“All right, but you call me before going under again today; the effects of that level of sedation can be a bit… tricky.”

She looked remarkably together for someone who had just been rendered unconscious by a colleague of Moriarty, but John still accompanied her to the door with one hand on her elbow, just in case. She walked straight and proud as always as she descended.

Once the sound of her shoes on the stairs had faded, Sherlock and John just stared at each other for a moment. The weight of… everything… felt like it was hanging on a string between them - and one thing in particular.

Sherlock cleared his throat to break the silence. “Well. That’s over for now, and as I _knew_ , it was a dream, so neither of us can be responsible for whatever chemicals led to our—“ 

"Don't you dare give me that ‘what happens in Vegas’ crap,” John interrupted. 

Sherlock stopped and stared at him, obviously confused.

“Er,” John said, unsure how to continue. After a moment more of uncomfortable staring, he turned on his heel. “Be right back,” he called as he hurried toward the stairs.

John could feel Sherlock’s eyes on his back but was indeed back in a flash, shoving something into his pocket that drew Sherlock’s eyes like a magnet.

“So,” he began. "Your totem is ridiculous."

Sherlock looked mortally offended. "It's an heirloom."

"And it's a very nice heirloom," John said hastily. Insulting Sherlock where he was most vulnerable was emphatically not the way to go about this. "But as a totem, it's impractical."

Sherlock sniffed in the way that meant he knew John was right and was only digging in his heels. "I happen to know that the woman who invented totems had one that was very similar."

John didn’t roll his eyes, though it was very tempting. “And that was a prototype, yes? It's been improved upon since then. You need a steady, flat surface to test it on, time to do so, and everyone who so much as glances at it knows everything about its secret. There's very little for you to check that couldn't be faked."

"I know when it's in my hand," he said defensively.

"Picked up a thing or two from Irene, have you?" John asked, smiling. "Look, you still have to take it out to check, and you can't mess too much with the weight of those things or the balance goes. And you might be in too much of a rush to 'know when it's in your hand,' genius."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him. "So what do you propose, _genius_?” 

"This." John pulled his old totem out of his pocket, and handed it over. 

"Your tags from the army?" Sherlock asked, holding them up curiously by the longer chain. 

"Well, they worked for me as a totem before,” John said, shrugging. “There are seven grooves in the edge that you can only count by feel. But… well. I do know what they feel like. So you’re going to have to trust me.” 

He looked carefully at Sherlock, who to all appearances was completely blank. “Do you trust me?" he asked gently, stepping forward.

Sherlock snorted and looped the chain over his head, his eyes never leaving John’s. "Seven grooves," he repeated, and John grinned. 

“The number is small enough that they can be counted in a hurry,” he explained - rather unnecessarily, but Sherlock’s eyes didn’t look away so he kept talking. “I mean. That’s the point, of course. And it’s easy to do; I’ve done it in the middle of firefights and—”

“Obviously,” Sherlock put in. “So why did you change?"

John hesitated. “Well, I woke up, didn't I, with that bullet? Seemed like a good sign.”

Sherlock scoffed, but didn’t make any further protest. Instead, he gave John an odd, searching look and suddenly strode away from him with a jerk, as though he’d meant to move all along and his body was just catching up to his intention.

“John, look,” he commanded. “There is a footprint here near the fireplace that matches none of our shoes, and is completely the wrong size for Moriarty.”

John came over to where he was pointing. Then he leaned down. Then he squinted.

“You mean that smudge on the carpet? I can barely see it.”

“But you CAN see it!” Sherlock crowed triumphantly. “I need to take a sample of that mud to Bart’s lab, find out more specifically where he’s been other than ‘chalky clay’ and… er… follow him.” He slowed - uncharacteristically - to a complete halt and looked at John again with that bizarre expression.

“We’ll need to catch a train,” he said carefully.

“…Okay,” John said, nonplussed. “To where?”

Sherlock looked shifty. “It doesn't matter where.”

John sputtered. “How can it not matter where the train’s going?”

“Oh, John,” Sherlock said, regarding him again with that odd look in his eyes. John wondered if it was something akin to pity. “You'll find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for taking a chance on this one! If you haven’t seen Inception, I really recommend it - it is fantastic. Many thanks to my beta friend who hasn’t actually lost her umlaut. :)


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